


you don't notice glass (until it breaks)

by orphan_account



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Angst, Character Study, Drug Use, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Mental Health Issues, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-12 06:43:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19223752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "But you know who I am! You know I'm not crazy!""No, I know you're not schizophrenic," the doctor replied. "Nonetheless, Mr. Hargreeves, I think you could benefit from spending a few weeks in our psych ward."





	1. The Sixth Sense

When Klaus wakes up, he's alive and it's dead quiet.

(Or, as near to dead quiet as a hospital can get, at any rate.

There's still the faint beeping and humming of the machines, and the occasional muffled voices coming from the hallway. They gave him his own room and, for once, it looks like he's actually alone in it. He doesn't even see Ben hovering anywhere.)

He's not sure how to feel about that.

Klaus groans, moves to get up.

Which is when he notices that he can't, because there's a pair of cuffs strapping his wrists down to the bed. And not even in the fun way. They're padded but somehow it makes them all the more uncomfortable. When he looks he can see white bandages sticking out from underneath the cuffs, on the left wrist it looks like they did a somewhat shitty job, the bandage already has specks of red.

He's wondering how successful he would be at slipping out of the restraints and making a break for it when the door swings open, and an unfamiliar face steps into the room. She's dressed in baby pink scrubs.

"Oh, good. You're up," she says.

"Unfortunately."

Her gaze flickers momentarily down to his wrists, then she crosses the room to look at what he assumes is his chart. After a second she glances back up at him and asks, "How are we feeling today, Klaus?"

Nurses, Klaus had noticed, love to say 'we' in place of 'you.' It was similar to the way a kindergarten teacher might talk to their kindergarteners right down to the slightly patronizing smile. Or at least, Klaus imagines it's similar. He doesn't think he's ever even met a teacher before, he was homeschooled. He says, no point in lying, "Crap."

"Some slight discomfort is to be expected," she says with a small nod. "The doctors were hesitant to put you on anymore painkillers given your...history. But Dr. Butler will come by later with Dr. Stevens to consult on that."

"Oh, lucky me."

She gives him a look for the sarcasm, but otherwise doesn't react as she places his chart back into the little folder for it on the wall. Then, almost as an afterthought, she tells him, "And we called your emergency contact, he's on his way."

Klaus has an emergency contact?

"I have an emergency contact?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Your brother."

"You snitched on me to  _Luther?"_ Fucking fantastic. Now he doesn't just have to put up with all of this hospital bullshit without any decent painkillers, but he gets to do it with Luther judging him. No really, he can't wait to hear the Klaus You're an Embarrassment to This Family Lecture. He's just missed hearing it so much since he left home. "That big oaf doesn't give a shit about me, why is  _he_ my contact? Did he even pick up?"

Which is met by a familiar voice answering from the doorway, "Other brother, jackass."

Ah, shit.

"Diego!" Klaus greets him, plastering a probably none too convincing smile onto his face. He goes to wave before remembering he can't, and something Klaus can't quite read passes over Diego's face when he spots the bandages on Klaus's wrists. "This isn't what it looks like."

"No? Then what is it?"

"I'll just," the nurse says, glancing back and forth between Klaus and Diego. "I'll just give you two a minute."

She scuttles out and then Klaus is alone in his room again, only this time with Diego judging him. And Klaus knows that no matter who had been his emergency contact they would be standing there judging him--those that would bother to show up, that is. But it's always been so much easier to have Luther judging him with his near perfect Dad impersonation. 

Diego's different. He's never tried to be Dad, in fact it's always been the opposite. Maybe that's what makes it hurt more.

"Would you believe this is all just a misunderstanding?"

"Klaus."

"Yeah, I didn't think that'd work."

* * *

The city was a loud place.

There were always cars zooming down the street, blaring their horns and their radios. A never-ending stream of foot-traffic, made up of people laughing, yelling, arguing, storytelling, complaining. The occasional street performer brought singing into the mix, and it wasn't always even particularly  _good_ singing. During the right time of the year, there was also the blowing of the wind, and the way it rustled the branches of trees, and dragged pieces of paper and Styrofoam cups along the sidewalk.

The point being sometimes the noise could get to be just a little too much, even for people who couldn't talk to the undead. But walking down the street with all of that on top of a gaggle of gruesome ghosts who just wouldn't shut up? Well, it might as well have been torture.

The last few nights that Klaus hadn't been able to sleep weren't entirely on the spirits though, in the interest of fairness.

Mostly, it was the shitty weather that was to blame.

Klaus had been taking up space on a park bench for the past week or so, too stubborn or too stupid to go back to the Hargreeves manor and lacking anywhere better to go. But they'd been getting closer and closer to winter, and it was kind of difficult to fall asleep when your teeth wouldn't stop chattering. Then last night when he had finally managed to doze off, those dumb old spirits had woken him up with their dumb old yelling. And lucky Klaus, it seemed like he was stuck with them until he could find a new high.

He'd tried walking faster. As it turns out, ghosts can speed walk, too. And when he clasped his hands over his ears they actually sounded like they were getting louder, which kind of defied all logic but then, he was being followed by ghosts so...Logic went out the window a long time ago.

Ghosts, by the way, have never known how to take a hint. They just get louder and more aggressive the more you try to ignore them.

Which was how Klaus wound up stopping in the middle of the crosswalk, those previously mentioned pesky passersby be damned, so he could round on his current group of followers and shout at them to, "Just  _shut._ Up!"

Surprise, surprise. That didn't work.

Ghosts were dicks. (No offense, Ben.)

One of them had been trying to convince Klaus for the past hour that them following him was actually a cure from god, as payment for his 'sins.' Another wanted to complain about his ex-wife stabbing him, and Klaus honestly couldn't fault him for wanting to complain about that, but what was  _Klaus_ supposed to do about it? He was neither a cop nor a therapist, thank you very much, and he had his own problems to deal with. First and foremost being the third ghost that was currently trailing him, who wasn't even addressing him anymore, because she was too busy arguing with that fourth fucking ghost. And neither of them were even speaking the same language.

"I can't help you," Klaus said, for what must have been the fifth time at least. Maybe they would hear him if they would shut up for a few seconds. "So could you please just zip it for like, five minutes?"

"You okay there, buddy?"

Klaus actually jumped when someone put a hand on his shoulder, and when he turned around he was tempted to ask if this day could get any worse, if not for the fact he knew that, with his luck, it would.

There was a cop standing there. A cop who, to his credit, took a step back and put his palms up in front of him when he realized that he'd scared Klaus.

Of course he spent his whole morning thus far trying to find a dealer, and instead he got found by a cop.

"Yeah, I'm swell," Klaus replied. "How are you?"

"Sounded like you were having an argument," Nosey Cop said, because nothing could ever be easy.

"Nope. No argument here," Klaus said. And then that overly religious ghost had to butt in and remind him that lying was a sin, as if out of all the things that Klaus does, a tiny white lie should be the thing he was worried about. Without thinking, he hissed back, "Mind your own business."

"Excuse me?"

"Shit, sorry, officer. Not you. I meant, uh....that pigeon! So nosey, am I right?"

"It's a bird."

"You're right. So beaky."

And yep, Klaus was doomed. He knew, because somewhere off to his right Ben just sighed.

"Alright, well why don't we move this conversation out of the crosswalk, huh?"

Which was when Klaus remembered he was even stopped in a crosswalk. Hell, he'd been focused on the ghosts he wanted to be quiet, he didn't even notice those car horns that he was hearing in the background were actually directed at him now.

"Crap, right," Klaus said, taking the rest of the six steps to make it to the curb.

"Alright, wanna tell me what happened back there?"

"Not particularly."

Nosey Cop raised an eyebrow at him. Klaus stuffed his hands in his pant pockets, then changed his mind and took them back out, wondering how long he had to stay in this conversation before he could leave it without looking even more suspicious. He would really hate to get in trouble before he could actually doing anything warranting it.

The cop opened his mouth to say something else then, but Klaus didn't get to hear whatever cop nonsense it was, because it seemed like that guy who got stabbed by his ex-wife got stabbed because nobody ever taught him basic manners, such as not talking over people. Or not shouting directly into their ear, "You're talking to a damn cop! Tell him who killed me! They let the bitch walk!"

"Would you mind shutting your pie hole? I'm trying to get out of having a conversation here."

In a way that conveyed he'd forgotten he couldn't interact with the things on the physical plane, the guy answered, "What, are you gonna make me, punk?"

"He's right," the wannabe priest ghost said, crossing his arms. "This is your chance you repent for your wrongs, Klaus. Why else would the Lord have sent us to you on the same day he sent you this young officer? It's all a part of His plan."

"Do you hear yourself?"

"Are you, uh," Nosey Cop said, glancing back and forth between Klaus and what he clearly thought was the empty space next to him. "You still talking to the pigeon?"

And Klaus might have answered that if those two ghosts who were previously too busy arguing with each other hadn't elected that moment to be the perfect one to try to drag him into their argument, just yelling exponentially louder as each one tried to talk over the other one. Not like Klaus could understand what either of them were saying past the stabbing victim guy shouting threats he couldn't physically follow through on while religious ghost rambled on about 'god's plan' and then there was a little boy behind Nosey Cop trying to get Klaus to play hopscotch with him.

Klaus dragged his hands over his face and begged, "Be quiet. I'm asking nicely, just shut up already. Please."

"Hey, pal," Nosey Cop said, and Klaus wondered if he sounded so condescending as a deliberate choice, or if it was just natural talent. "Maybe you should calm down there. D'you want to sit down?"

"I am calm, and I'm not your pal," Klaus told him, turning away to start back down the sidewalk. While he walked he stuck his fingers in his ears in an effort to muffle the religious ghost's sermon of the hour. He stuck his tongue out and said, not entirely truthfully, "Can't hear you! Lalalalala. What? Speak up? Didn't catch that."

"Hey, slow down."

Klaus elected to deal with Nosey Cop following him the same way he was dealing with the rest of his existing problems: ignore, ignore, ignore. Because it was working so well with everything else. "Would you just leave me alone?"

And whether he was talking to the living or dead people following him didn't matter because none of them, it seemed, would be listening.

"I'm just trying to help you out," Nosey Cop said.

At the same time, stab guy said, "He's following you so you can tell him who stabbed me."

And religious guy, "It's time to repent, Klaus."

And Ben, "Klaus, it's okay. Just breathe."

And the other two kept bickering. Was it just him, or were they getting louder?

"I can't," Klaus said, shaking his head. They definitely were getting louder and louder, and the street was definitely getting smaller and smaller. Ben looked worried and funny enough, so did the cop. Klaus stepped back, away from them, and covered his ears again. He screwed his eyes closed as tight as they would go, hoping maybe when he opened them again he'd be by himself. Back on the park bench, he didn't care. As long as it was quiet.

That method didn't work. Conveniently, his brain had elected that moment to be one the ones where, when he closed his eyes, he saw that mausoleum flicker across the inside of his eyelids.

Somehow the memory of their voices call his name in his head even louder than the current ghosts calling his name right now. He shook his head again, backing up until he bumped into a streetlight and sitting down there, one hand over his chest. He was breathing too fast. His heart was beating too fast. The ghosts wouldn't shut up. Wouldn't stop. Kept getting closer. Everything was too loud, too bright, too fast. Too loud.

"I can't breath, just be quiet. For five minutes. Bitte. Please, please."

It was the second time he jumped when Nosey Cop reached out to touch his shoulder. Through some really inconvenient instinct, Klaus was actually halfway to punching the guy before he was able to stop himself.

Nosey Cop took a small step back and said, "I want you to listen to me, okay? I can help."

Fat fucking chance.

The only thing that could help him was....well, suffice to say it was something he wouldn't be getting from the police. Not that he was about to give out that much information, but he figured he could say, "Thanks, but you can't help me. Give it a rest, will you?"

That second part directed at the two who still wouldn't stop arguing. God, he looked like a crazy person.

"Just come with me," Nosey Cop said. He glanced over to Klaus's left then back to Klaus and asked, "You want them to be quiet, don't you?"

"Do we trust him?" Ben asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

"I'm not crazy," Klaus said. Because he knew that was what the cop was thinking. People only talked to ostensibly nothing if they were crazy or high. And sure, Klaus was a little bit crazy, but not for the reasons this guy thought. And sure he was usually that second option to, but unfortunately, not this time. But  he found himself doubting exactly how effective the reassurance would be to the cop; it was mostly the crazy people, after all, who found themselves saying that they weren't, in fact, crazy.

Nosey Cop was, to say the least, skeptical. But he nodded all the same and said, "I know. I know you're not."

"This cop's either stupid or a liar," stab victim said. "You're batshit."

"Who asked you?" Klaus answered.

"Just come with me, okay, buddy? I'll take you to someone who can help."

"I don't need help."

"Well, you need food, don't you? We can grab you a meal."

He thought about asking whether or not he had any choice in the matter, before deciding he already knew what the answer was. Which was how Klaus wound up in the back seat of a police car again. Well, at least he wasn't being arrested this time. For now.

He didn't know where they were going, though. They drove right past the precinct.

Klaus wasn't going to complain, not yet anyway. Only Ben had gotten in the car with him, and the three ghosts that had been annoying him all morning had been left standing on the street corner. It was finally, apart from the occasional car horn or radio, quiet. Klaus already felt like he could breath a little easier. Admittedly, the quiet was only temporary.

And so, it seemed, was that feeling of relief that it came with.

Because when he saw that they were pulling in to the parking lot for the hospital a few blocks south of Brick Town, Klaus knew this wasn't going to go a direction that he wanted it to.

As they got out of the car, Klaus ignored the guy with two bullet wounds in his stomach already walking towards them in favor of addressing Nosey Cop. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and said, "Know what? Thanks for the ride, but I think I'm just gonna go now."

"Come on inside with me," the cop answered.

A little more arguing and a front lobby later, and Klaus was sitting in some doctor's office by himself. They left the door open, and Klaus could hear the cop talking in the hallway, to a woman he assumed was a doctor. He couldn't hear everything--it was kind of hard to eavesdrop with the little ghost girl singing nursery rhymes right next to him, especially when she kept getting the words wrong--but he was pretty sure he caught the phrases 'schizophrenic' and 'harm himself or others' being passed around. Typical stinking cops.

After a couple of minutes, their conversation came to an end. Then a redheaded woman no taller than five foot three walked into the room sans cop, shutting the door the door behind her and making her way over to the table Klaus was sitting on.

He wondered what the odds were of him convincing her that he was neither crazy, nor dangerous to 'himself or others.' Well okay, maybe to himself just a little bit. But not to others, and that was the part they really cared about. Them convincing Klaus that they cared about him would be just as impossible as Klaus convincing them he wasn't crazy.

"Hi there," she greeted him, offering a smile. "I'm Dr. Van Buren. You are?"

He just shook the hand that she had offered him and said, "Not schizo."

"Is that first name Not, last name Schizo?" Ben asked, raising an eyebrow. Klaus blew him a raspberry.

"Well, I think we'll decide that together in a minute. Before we do, is there a name you want to give me?"

He puffed out a sigh, leaning back against the wall and answering, "Klaus."

The doctor scribbled that down on the clipboard she was holding and then asked, without looking up, "Got a last name?"

"Hargreeves."

"Okey dokey. Well Mr. Hargreeves, I'm just going to have someone check the system for your medical records, alright?" She crossed back to the door for a second, opening it halfway to poke her head out. He heard her call someone in the hallway and pass his name along to them, and then she shut the door and came back over. Clicking her pen she said, "While we wait, why don't I ask you a couple of quick questions?"

"How about I ask you one instead?" Klaus replied. She raised an eyebrow at him and he said, "Is this gonna take very long? 'Cause I got things to do today."

"However long it takes is entirely up to you, Mr. Hargreeves."

"Perfect!" Klaus hopped off the table and started for the door. "Well, it was nice meeting ya, doc."

She stopped him with a hand on his chest. "Okay, maybe not  _entirely_ up to you. Why don't you take a seat?"

Klaus found that he didn't particularly care whether or not she caught him rolling his eyes as he went to sit back down. What he did care about, though, was not wasting an extra second of his time in this place when he had weed to smoke somewhere else. Well, dealers to find, and then weed to smoke. Or coke to do. He really wasn't all that picky.

After watching him for a couple of seconds, the doctor asked, "Does your family have a history of mental illness?"

"Depends. If you're asking about my biological family, your guess is as good as mine," Klaus says, tucking one leg up in front of him. "Non-biological family, on the other hand? I still have no idea, but I'm willing to bet there's  _something_ wrong in old Reggie's brain."

"You were adopted?"

"Yep."

"And you know nothing about your birth parents?"

_"Parent_ ," Klaus corrected. "I think she was German."

"And you don't know about your biological father, is that it?"

"Didn't have one."

"Excuse me?" The doctor paused to look up at him, narrowing her eyes momentarily. Then the proverbial lightbulb flickered on above her head and she said, "Oh! Hargreeves! You were one of those Umbrella children?"

"Unfortunately. Can I go now?"

"Just a few more questions. Can I ask what happened back there with Officer Cooper?"

"You can ask."

"Mr. Hargreeves, if you're in such a hurry to go, you may want to consider answering my questions."

"Look, I was just minding my own business, trying to have a conversation, and Officer Whatever wouldn't leave me alone."

"Hm, not how I remember it," Ben commented.

"Who's side are you on, Ben?"

"Who's Ben?"

Ah, shit.

Klaus groaned, turning away from Ben to look back at the doctor. This whole situation was, frankly, an entire nightmare. And Klaus had certainly had enough of them to know. But he figured this was the woman who was supposed to evaluate whether he was a bona fide psycho or not. Which meant she would probably be able to see through whatever lie he came up with. And besides, it had taken he a second, but she'd recognized the name. She had to believe he wasn't crazy. So he said, "My brother."

She nodded, writing something down on her clipboard. "And is he here now?"

No, Klaus was just talking to him because he's  _not_ there.

"I don't have schizophrenia," Klaus said, in lieu of answering her dumb question. Although in retrospect, that was probably enough of an answer for her. He ran his hands through his hair and added softly, "I'm not crazy."

"But you talk to people who aren't there?"

"Hello? Umbrella thing you just mentioned? 'I see dead people.'" On that last line, he did his best impersonation of that kid from  _The Sixth Sense._ It got a chuckle out of Ben, but the doctor didn't seem to have much of a sense of humor. Whatever. She didn't have to laugh at his jokes, as long as she believed him. He was not about to be chucked into the looney bin. He said, "And I don't talk to them, they talk to me. Won't shut up, in fact."

"Okay. That still doesn't explain the panic attack Officer Cooper described."

"Panic attack?"

Fantastic. A guy freaks out a little because the god damn corpses following him around won't put a sock in it, and all of a sudden he had a full blown panic attack.

The doctor just nodded. "According to him, you claimed to be having difficulty breathing, caused a scene in the crosswalk, and then later nearly backed into oncoming traffic. Oh, and you almost hit him."

"Almost being the operative word here."

She just blinked at him.

Klaus rolled his eyes and said, "Alright fine, I freaked out. But you would too, if you had needy little dead people following you around all day, and keeping you awake all night."

"I'm not judging you, Mr. Hargreeves, but I need you to be honest with me. I'm just here to help you." God, but he was getting real sick of hearing that. And of course she had to follow it up with something he wanted to hear even less. "Would you like to talk to me about the needle marks on your arms?"

Klaus offered her a fake smile and said, "We all have our hobbies."

She wrote something else down on the clipboard. What was she writing? How many more questions could she even have? Once they confirmed he was in fact the Klaus Hargreeves from Dear Old Dad's stupid Academy, it should be pretty damn obvious that he wasn't schizophrenic. They should be letting him leave by now. Sure, there were a few people who still thought him and his siblings had been some incredibly elaborate hoax, but widely their existence was just accepted. They had to believe him. 

It looked like she was about to say something else on the subject, but then there was a knock at the door. Some dude poked his head in and handed her a file, and then she shut the door again.

The room was quiet for a moment then--well, the doctor was quiet. The room still had the ghost girl singing her nursery rhymes, and some old man had wandered in complaining about the cost of a surgery and his insurance. Otherwise, though, the room was silent. The doctor read through the file quickly, Klaus guessed it was all they had on him.

A pretty small file, considering Mom and Pogo had dealt with just about all of his medical stuff while he was growing up. Why send your kid to the doctors when you have an android and a genetically enhanced chimpanzee, right?

The doctor asked, "Would those hobbies happen to have anything to do with the two overdoses you've had in the past three years?"

"I don't--I don't know what you're talking about."

"Convincing," Ben told him with a nod.

"Shut your pie hole. Oh, no you, doc. I meant Ben."

"Noted." She looked back down at the file, a somewhat troubled look on her face. Klaus didn't know why. As far as he could remember, those two overdoses that she'd mentioned were the only things on his medical record. "And what was the story? Behind the overdoses, I mean."

"Oh, it's riveting stuff. First, I took some drugs. And then it was too many drugs, and then they whisked me away in an ambulance, and now here I am."

"Was it an accident?"

Klaus looked over at Ben, who was looking, for some reason, like he was also curious to know the answer.

And Klaus knew where she was going with that. He shook his head, holding up and index finger and saying, "Whatever you're thinking, stop thinking it. I am fine. Mentally, emotionally. Spiritually. Abdominally. Ben, gimme some more ally's. Philosophically."

Ben, apparently not keen on being on Klaus's side today, said, "Klaus, when was the last time you got a full night's sleep? Or bought a meal with your money instead of drugs?"

"Those are all valid points, but I'm gonna counter with this," Klaus said. "Fuck you."

"Mature, Klaus."

"Okay, I'm not gonna hurt myself though," he said, glancing back and forth between the doctor and Ben. He wondered how offended he should be that Ben seemed to be buying it just as much as the doctor was. Well, Ben he could at least excuse it from. Ben  _knew_ him. But this doctor lady didn't know a thing about him, and she had no right acting like she did. "Don't give me that look, it was one time."

"Two. It was two times."

"But I've been careful since then, haven't I?"

"What have you been doing that's even close to careful?"

Klaus was about to answer that, although he admittedly wasn't sure wat with, but then the doctor cleared her throat. When he turned back to her, she had one eyebrow raised. She said, "I'll admit I can't hear your brother, but from what I'm hearing, it sounds like he's worried about you too."

"Yup," Ben said, at the same time Klaus said, "No, not really."

Ben smacked him in the shoulder. Or at least he would have, if he were capable of interacting with the physical plane. Instead his hand went right through Klaus's shoulder, but he made his point. Klaus glanced at the doctor and then back at Ben. He was, he thought, losing this battle. He said, "There's nothing to worry about! What, just because I have a little trouble sleeping? Or occasionally take a few too many pills, or what? Cross the street without looking both ways? I mean, come on. I'm not gonna hurt myself."

"But do you want to?"

She delivered the question so matter of fact, Klaus had to pause for a second. Did he? Okay, maybe every now and then he thought about it. But didn't everyone? And especially, wouldn't they, in his shoes? There were only so many ways to quiet the voices, and they never lasted long enough. He'd never actively done it, though. Never followed through on those thoughts. The overdoses really had been accidents. Hadn't they?

He was being quiet too long. The doctor was going to think that meant the answer was a yes, and then she was going to toss him in some padded room to live out the remainder of his days as a psycho. He forced a laugh and said, "Of course not. Why would  _anyone_ wanna hurt me? Least of all  _me?"_  

Again the doctor wrote something on her stupide clipboard. Then, "Just now you mentioned you had trouble sleeping. Can you elaborate on that for me?"

"No."

"Mr. Hargreeves."

"Would you stop calling me that?" Klaus said, pulling a  _yuck_ face. "I only don't wanna elaborate because it's a waste of both of our time, because there's nothing wrong with me. Apart from the fact I have places to be, and I'm sitting here talking to you instead."

The doctor frowned at him and then asked, "Would you describe your trouble sleeping as nightmares, or an inability to fall or stay asleep?"

Both, technically. He had the nightmares pretty frequently, although not as much as he had them before moving out, funny enough. But the inability to fall asleep wasn't on him, it was just hard to sleep on a park bench in the cold, when you had to be higher than a kite just to get some peace and quiet.

Of course, all of the doctor's questions were obviously traps. She wanted to trick him into saying something that would let her stick him in a psych ward and throw away the key. So since he couldn't tell her it was both, but not answering would make him look more guilty (of what, he wasn't sure) he weighed which reply made him sound less coocoo for coco puffs. After a second he shrugged and said, "Second one, I guess."

"Mhm," the doctor hummed, noting his answer on her clipboard. Klaus kind of wanted to take the clipboard and snap it in half to be honest, but that would probably make him look more insane, so he stuck to doing not that. "Aright. Can you tell me about your eating habits?"

"He spends more money on drinking and drugs than food."

"Y'know she can't hear you, right?"

"Yeah, but I like telling you. Maybe one day you'll listen to me."

"That's optimistic," he said, pulling his second leg up onto the table with him. If the doctor noticed he wasn't wearing any shoes she didn't say anything. He shrugged and said, "I have normal eating habits."

"Would you say you have trouble focusing?"

"Hm? You say something?"

Ben snorted.

The doctor asked him what felt like a hundred more questions. Ones that she insisted he answer, despite consistently ignoring or avoiding his questions. (Although to be fair, those 'questions' were all just different variations of "We done?" "Can I go now?") And then she wanted him to give her a list of all the drugs he'd been doing in the past few months. Like he kept an itemized list or something.

He'd been there long enough the ghost girl got bored of singing her nursery rhymes and wandered away, and long enough for some old woman to show up speaking Japanese by the time the doctor clicked her pun shut and tucked the clipboard away under her arm.

For what felt like the hundredth time, Klaus asked, "Can I go now? Please?"

"Actually, Mr. Hargreeves, I think you should stay a little while. I think you'll be better off here."

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

She wanted him to stay 'a little while.' A nice vague amount of time, so they could lock him up and then keep saying 'a little while longer' every day. What had he said that made her think he was crazy enough to belong in the nuthouse? Dammit, he thought he'd been so careful.

Klaus had more than his fair share of issues, sure. But he wasn't insane. Or at least, not so insane that they had lock him up for the good of society or whatever. And besides, Klaus couldn't stay here, it would only make his current problem of being Far Too Sober to Deal With This even worse. Plus more ghosts always seemed to gravitate to him the longer he stayed in one place (it had made that stint in prison last year  _so_ fun. And by fun, he meant horrible.) If they made him stay here for long enough, he'd probably go crazy enough to actually belong there.

He looked at her in disbelief. "But you know who I am! You know I'm not crazy!"

"Well, I know you're not schizophrenic," the doctor replied. "Nonetheless, Mr. Hargreeves, it's my professional opinion that you would benefit from could benefit from a few weeks in our psych ward."

"Fuck that."

Klaus jumped off the table. He wondered whether he could make it to the parking lot if he made a break for it. It wasn't like they wanted him here  _that_ bad, they might not even chase him. And even if they did, he was a pretty fast runner. He had a pretty good chance if he could just make it out of the building.

"Calm down," the doctor said, blocking the door, gesturing with he palms out in front of her for him to calm down. "We only want to help you. I think staying here a little while will do that for you."

"With what? For what?" He pointed at the damned clipboard, in a manner probably frantic enough that she was just mentally confirming her suspicion that he was, in fact, utterly bonkers. Maybe he was, but not enough to believe that anyone who worked in this building actually possessed any ability to help him at all. "What, pray tell, do you think you're locking me up for?"

"Locking you--? This isn't a prison, we aren't locking you up."

"You got that right, 'cause I'm outta here. Great meeting you doc. No really, the pleasure's all yours. Let's totally do this again some time."

While he spoke he was trying to maneuver past her to get to the door, while she kept stepping around him to block it.

"Alright, alright," Klaus said, feigning resignation and taking a half step back. "You got me, I'll stay."

"Thank you," the doctor said, breathing out a sigh of relief.

Of course, the second her guard was down Klaus grabbed her shoulder and pushed her away from the door, shouting, "SIKE!" as he swung the door open and booked it into the hallway.

He even surprised himself--what with the smoker's lungs and 0.035 hours of sleep he was running on--when he made it as far as the elevator. He pressed the down button, and when the elevator doors didn't immediately he pressed the down button about fifteen more times. There was shouting somewhere behind him, probably the doctor flagging down security or something.

Definitely security or something, he decided when he glanced over his shoulder and saw two beefcakes in orderlies scrubs coming at him.

Which was why Klaus elected to abandon the elevator, turning to run down the first hallway he saw in the hopes of finding the stairs. He tipped over the janitor's cart as he ran past it, aware as he laughed at one of the guys slipping on the soapy water that this probably wasn't the route a totally normal, one hundred percent sane person would have taken to being told they were being admitted. But then, if he could make it out of the building, it wouldn't matter how sane he looked.

"He's headed past pediatrics! Someone alert security!"

When he rounded the corner and immediately slammed into a human person, Klaus wondered just how quickly they'd been able to alert security. That was, until he looked up from where he now found himself on the ground, to see a familiar head of curly hair also on the ground about a foot away from him. What the hell?

"Allison?"

_"Klaus?_ _"_

"What're you doing here--Never mind, I need you to hide me," Klaus said, glancing over his shoulder before turning back to her. Not that this was the time, but what the hell was she wearing?

"I can't hide you, Klaus," she said. It was a longshot anyway. "I'm visiting the kids."

That threw him for a loop. "Ew, you have kids?"

"No, I'm visiting  _sick kids_. As my character."

"Oh, that explains the outfit."

"Shut up."

"Help me!"

Before Allison could answer, those two goons from before rounded the corner, nearly tripping on Klaus. Which, rude, by the way. Then he was being grabbed by the arms and hauled back up onto his feet, despite his best effort not to be. He managed to get one arm free by elbowing one of them in the stomach, but it wasn't free long before he was grabbed again.

Largely unimpressed by the whole scene in front of her, Allison rolled her eyes as she pulled herself to her feet, wiping some invisible dust off of her 'outfit.' She scoffed and asked, "In trouble again, Klaus?"

"It's just a misunderstanding," Klaus said, slamming his heel down on one of the orderlies' toes.

"Sir, please calm down," the orderly answered, in a tone that would have been far more convincing if he didn't sound so fucking winded. "I don't want to have to sedate you."

"Please, that would be the best thing to happen to me all day." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol okay so to those of u reading the first version of this: i'm rewriting it!! i kinda changed my mind on some details and where i wanted to go with it, so...anyway, i'm keeping the first version up for a little while, but this is the one that's going to be getting updated.
> 
> if u weren't reading the first version then ignore that. anything you like about my writing was totally achieved on the first try. yep. for sure.
> 
> also!! i'm making a spotify playlist for this fic, so comment if u want me to post a link or have any song recs!! <3


	2. Plan of (In)action

In the end, they must've had him sedated.

Klaus knew, because he woke up in a different room, incredibly groggy but with a faint sense of floating. The other dead giveaway (ha, dead) was that he didn't have any corpses keeping him company. That was, unless you counted Allison, sitting in the chair at his bedside filling out what looked like boring hospital paperwork.

"What happened?"

"The nurses sedated you and you thanked them," Allison answered without looking up from the form in front of her. She was still dressed in her costume from before, but at least she'd ditched that ridiculous purple jacket. If Klaus wasn't currently crazy, he'd probably go and have a word with her wardrobe director. "And somehow  _I_ got lumped with filling out your paperwork. You don't have insurance, do you?"

"Where do you get that?"

"Didn't think so."

* * *

The Hargreeves manor was quiet at night.

Well, it was quiet at night for six of the people, one android, and one chimpanzee living in it. Because Reginald Hargreeves had a rule about the curfew, and he approached it in much the same way he approached the rest of his rules, and just about everything else: strict, tyrannical, and unforgiving. So unless Reginald explicitly stated otherwise, everyone was in their rooms in bed when the curfew rolled around.

All but two of the people living there, that was.

"Allison? Are you awake?"

She was trying very hard not to be, actually. But if the persistent whispering coming from her doorway had any say, and boy did it have a lot  _to_ say, she wasn't going to sleep just yet.

"Alli?  _Psst._ Allison."

Her first plan of dealing with the intrusion was just to ignore it. So rarely did it work, but sometimes if you ignore a problem enough, it goes away. Besides, Allison had learned a very valuable lesson in her long, nine years of life. And that lesson was that if you got out of bed when you were almost asleep, then by the time you came back to bed, you wouldn't be able to fall asleep anymore. And after a long day of training and bickering with Diego and more training and bickering with Five and more training, Allison really wanted to be asleep.

Still, she knew he wouldn't be there if he didn't need her. Wouldn't be risking Dad catching him breaking curfew if it wasn't bad. So she sighed and answered, "Yeah, Klaus. I'm up."

"Cool."

Allison could just make out Klaus's frame hovering awkwardly in the doorway, his eyes on the ground. It was kind of funny, in a not very funny way, but no matter how many times they went through this same routine, Klaus never actually asked Allison for her help. Plausible deniability, maybe?

"Trouble sleeping?" she asked.

"Yeah. D'you mind?"

"Yeah, but I'll help you anyway, 'cause I'm an awesome sister," Allison said, tossing her covers aside. She had to practically shove Klaus to get him to move from his spot in the doorway, and then they started down the hall together back to his room, careful to avoid the floorboard that creaked by the left wall and the lip of that rug that was a real tripping hazard in the dark.

They crossed the hallways in deliberate silence. After they'd reached their destination, as was their routine, Klaus climbed wordlessly back into his bed. And, as was their routine, Allison pretended not to notice the makeshift nightlight he still had on his nightstand, crafted from old Christmas lights and a bear shaped honey jar.

She was also supposed to pretend not to notice the way Klaus's eyes kept flickering over to the same spot in the corner of the room, but sometimes her curiosity got the better of her.

Before she could rethink it, she asked, "Who is it this time?"

"No one," Klaus said, his attention snapping back to her. "I just can't stop thinking about that stain on the wall. It's very distracting."

As far as cover stories went, that sucked. Although the stain was actually pretty gross. someone really had to clean that up soon. She let herself smile, figuring it might make him feel better, and humored him. "Yeah, how  _did_ you manage to spill beans that high up on the wall?"

"Dance party with beans," he answered, very matter of fact. As if that should have been the obvious answer.

"Of course," she said, rolling her eyes. A second went by and she moved to perch on the edge of his bed, absentmindedly fixing one of his blankets as she did. "You good?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Okay," Allison said, clearing her throat. "I heard a rumor...that you fell asleep, and didn't have any bad dreams."

Just before his eyes slid shut, Klaus murmured, almost too soft for her to hear it, "Thank you."

* * *

Honestly, the psych ward was somewhat anticlimactic. They didn't give him a Houdini jacket, or lock him up in a padded room like he'd imagined in the middle of freaking the fuck out.

And Klaus had never really seen the appeal of horror movies (they kind of lose the effect when you're practically living in one) but the few he had seen hadn't framed places like this as exactly cozy. He'd been expecting flickering lights, or eerie music, or general, overall evil undertones. And for it to be filled with ghosts. Well alright, it actually  _was_ full of ghosts, the movies hadn't been wrong about that. But  _everywhere_ was full of ghosts, so who gave a shit?

It wasn't terribly cozy, either. The décor wasn't quite as morbid as it was in the films, but mostly because it was nonexistent.

After all of the paperwork had been finished and Allison had left, the place actually seemed kind of boring.

They took Klaus's belt, and made him empty his pockets so they could go through his stuff. Something he complained about profusely, but otherwise couldn't really do anything about. It wasn't like he had anything he particularly didn't want them seeing; twenty bucks, a Sharpie pen that was almost out of ink, a polaroid of him and Ben from the photo booth at the movies (the camera hadn't actually picked Ben up, unfortunately, but whatever), some bobby pins, and a half of a pair of scissors. It was just the principle of thing.

And what was more annoying than them going through his stuff was that the only thing they let him keep was the photo and the bobby pins. Everything else they put in a little cubby and told him he'd get it back when he was discharged.

After that they sent him back to 'his room' and left him alone.

The first thing he did when he was left alone there was try to pry the window open. He didn't think it would work, and it didn't. It was a shitty window anyway, thanks to the building next door being so tall it didn't even let any sun into the room.

"Awesome," Klaus said, flopping back onto the mattress with a dramatic groan. He could, at the very least, appreciate that it was a significantly softer place to lay than his park bench. Even if it afforded none of the freedoms. He glanced over at the chair next to his bed and asked, "Hey, Ben, do you think if I make a big enough scene, they'll give me some more of that sedative?"

"I really don't think they'll give you more drugs, Klaus."

"Not even a little?"

Ben just shook his head.

Klaus puffed out a breath and settled lower into the mattress. Where he stayed for about three seconds before moving to sit up on his elbows. As much softer as it was than the park bench, Klaus still couldn't get comfortable. He sat back up, moving to look out the useless excuse of a window, pressing his forehead up against the glass to look outside.

They weren't really that far up. Three or four stories, tops. He could make out the stray cat trying to cross the road, but stopped by the perpetual stream of cars flying by.

"Well maybe I could break this glass and scale my way down the building."

"Somehow, I don't see that working."

"Have I ever told you how much your constant support means to me?" He glanced back at Ben just in time to catch the end of an eye roll, then turned to look back out the window. The cat, it looked like, had given up on crossing the street, and turned to head back in the other direction. Klaus frowned and said, "What if I knock out a doctor and take their clothes."

"They have a guard in the hallway."

"I knock out a guard and take their clothes."

Ben granted him a half-laugh before shutting that idea down, too. He shook his head and said, "First off, I don't see you fighting a guard and winning. Second, and here's a crazy idea, why don't you just stay the three weeks? It's supposed to start snowing soon, at least now you have some shelter. And hey! You can get sober while you're at it. Would that really be such a bad thing?"

"Alright, if you're not gonna be serious about this, zip it," Klaus said, shooting Ben a disapproving look.

Three weeks was  _forever_. Klaus couldn't stay here that long. Not to mention, that was the recommended commitment. At the end of that, they might decide he's even more bananas than they already thought, and make him stay a literal forever. No, the only way he was getting out of here was if he broke himself out.

He wished, just for a second, that Allison hadn't left.

He wondered if she would tell Luther and Diego and Vanya what had happened, or if she'd just forgotten about him completely by the time she stepped foot back outside the hospital. Wondered why he couldn't stand the idea of that first option at all, and yet still felt just a little unsettled by the second one.

Klaus got up off the bed in favor of pacing the room. He wasn't sure what was a better sign of the sedative having worn off, his own pent up energy, or the skin and bones woman sitting on his floor crying while frantically whispering to herself. A part of him wanted to ask her what was wrong, see if he could maybe cheer her up. A bigger part of him wanted her to shut up and go away.

There was a knock on the door.

Klaus jumped at the sudden noise, then stopped and said, "Yeah?"

The door swung halfway open, and a stranger poked their head into the room. He had scruffy brown hair and a pair of the nerdiest looking glasses that Klaus had ever seen. He seemed somewhat nervous, but in a way that made Klaus think nervous was his default demeanor. He asked, "Are you Klaus?"

"Last I checked, yeah. And you are?"

"Uh, Frankie. I'm Frankie. Dr. Butler asked me to get you."

"Who the hell is Dr. Bueller?"

"Butler. She's, um, in charge of Group tonight."

Well, that sounded delightful. And by delightful, he meant fucking terrible. Klaus rolled his eyes, and then felt almost bad for it, because poor Frankie looked like he took it personally. He didn't, however, feel bad enough to agree to going to Group when he could be...well, doing literally anything else. He shook his head and said, "Yeah, no thanks."

"Well, one Group session is technically mandatory every week, and if you miss this one you'll be stuck in the Thursday session."

"What's so bad about the Thursday session?"

"It's full of all the antisocial assholes who didn't go to Group earlier," Frankie said.

That was just a little more blunt than Klaus was honestly expecting from this Franklin person, but he figured that for the time being he was willing to trust the guy's judgement. Of the two of them, it wasn't Klaus who had been there the longest, after all. And besides, while Group didn't exactly sound like a grand old party, it might beat pacing back and forth in his room until he could figure out how to sneak out of the place. With that in mind, he relented and crossed the room to give Frankie a pat on the shoulder and say, "Why don't you show me to Group?"

So he followed Frankie out into the hallway.

About five steps out a teenage girl started following behind them, complaining that the cafeteria food had been too bland. If it weren't for the fact her clothing was clearly right out of the 1940s, Klaus would have believed she was just another patient, headed to Group. As it was he just relieved this ghost only wanted to complain about food. He could tolerate that.

Klaus tried to make conversation with Frankie while they walked, but either the poor bastard wasn't very talkative, or he just didn't like Klaus, because he didn't seem to have much to say.

He figured it must have been the first option when they made it to the right room, and Frankie chose the seat next to Klaus when they sat down in the cliché circle of chairs. The room Group was held in was about as boring as the rest of the psych ward. He wondered whose idea it had been to have all the walls be the same shade of white, with only the occasional motivational poster (if Klaus saw one more 'Hang in there baby' cat poster he was going to torch the place) hung up on the walls. It wasn't, he thought, an environment that exactly fostered sanity.

He was snapped out of his criticism of the interior design when someone said his name. He turned to see a tiny freckled, blonde woman in a gray dress. She said, "You must be Klaus."

"The one and only."

"I'm Dr. Butler," she said. "But you can also call me Dr. Linda or just Linda. I'm glad to see you made it to Group."

"Thanks Dr. Bueller. It's really just 'cause one more second in that boring room and I was gonna go crazy," Klaus told her with a grin. Then he laughed and said, "Oh wait! I already  _am_. Right?"

"Okay, well it's actually Butler. And we try not to use the 'crazy' word around here."

"You just did."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ben facepalm.

Dr. Whatever gave him a customer-service-smile and said, "I said it telling you not to--Know what? Nevermind."

After that, she moved on to checking in with some other poor sap sitting in the circle. They schmoozed for a few more minutes until the clock on the wall had ticked to six o'clock and most of the stupid plastic chairs had been filled. Of course, the room was a bit more full than that, if the man with the broken neck and the pale woman standing behind the doctor's shoulder counted.

Dr. Butler clapped her hands and waited for everyone to turn to look at her to say, "Welcome back, everyone. Now, seeing as we have a couple new faces in the mix, why don't we start by going around the circle introducing ourselves?"

And they did go in a circle introducing themselves, like a bunch of morons. Klaus learned all of zero names from it.

Admittedly, that may or may not have had something to do with the fact that Klaus didn't even make an effort to listen. But he already knew that even if he had tried, he wouldn't have been able to focus. His legs wouldn't stop bouncing entirely of their own accord, and he'd suddenly realized he hadn't actually gotten around to eating anything all day, and his mind kept wandering back to wondering where he could get a hit of  _anything_ in this atrocity of a place. Not to mention that pale woman kept trying to get him to listen to her about her botched surgery, and broken neck guy was...well, distracting enough just to look at, to be honest. Heads should not turn to that angle.

When the circle made its way around to him, Ben actually had to clear his throat and say, "Klaus they're waiting for you."

"Oh, right," Klaus said, shaking his head and trying to refocus on the circle. "Hi, I'm Seymore Cox."

"You're real name, please."

"Okay, you got me. I am...Iron Man."

"Everyone, this is Klaus Hargreeves!" Dr. Butler said. Then, "Alright, Vinny, you're up."

Which kind of spoiled the point, because now everyone already knew his name was Vinny. She killed the suspense. Dumb bitch.

Klaus tuned the group back out once they started asking for 'any volunteers who would like to share their progress or struggles from the past few days.' Some short girl who looked like she'd been through a car crash and a half wandered into the room, and boy was she not happy about being dead. Klaus tried to tune her out along with everyone else in the room, focus on counting the number of tiles on the ceiling or something. It worked for all of about forty five seconds.

"I can't do this," he whispered to Ben, loud enough that Freddie--no, that wasn't right--shot him a look out of the corner of his eye, but nobody else seemed to notice. "I have a headache. D'you have a headache?"

"I'm a ghost."

"Right."

He was about to say something else, hopefully witty and cutting, when he realized that there was only one other voice making noise in the room. That was too low of a number. Klaus scrubbed a hand over his face and looked away from Ben, back out into the dreaded circle. Dr. Butler raised an eyebrow at him, some mixture of disapproving and curious, and asked, "Something you'd like to share with the Group, Klaus?"

"I'll pass, thanks."

She narrowed her eyes at him for a moments indecision, then seemed to make up her mind because she turned to somebody else and said, "Rosie. How have you been?"

A tiny ginger girl, apparently Rosie, offered a tiny smile before launching into her answer. But she spoke softly, and even if she didn't, the answer was drowned out entirely by a sudden outburst from that car crash girl. She was practically wailing about how now she wouldn't get to go to her prom, and how her sister would totally be going through her closet right now, and 'woe is me, I'm dead.' And yeah, Klaus wasn't completely heartless. He knew far too well that someone dying so young was a damn tragedy. Nonetheless, he didn't think he could hear so much as one more word about it.

Rosie's share came to an end and the doctor told her that her feelings were 'valid' or whatever, and the circle moved on to someone else bitching about their day. Klaus didn't want to imagine having to sit through this every week for the next three weeks.

Klaus wrapped an arm around his stomach and leaned forward, squeezing his eyes shut against the ongoing shouting match between car crash girl and pale woman about whose death had been the bigger tragedy. It was a petty fight to even have, both of them were dead, they better get used to it. Under his breath he muttered, "Not this again."

Say what you like about the dead, they were terrible listeners. With even worse timing.

The bullet wound guy from the parking lot earlier showed up again, looking about twice as pissed off as Klaus remembered. Or maybe Klaus's empathy for it all had just been halved, but that would be a feat. Either way, the asshole had been in the room for all of one minute and he was already yelling. Apparently angry with Klaus specifically, because, "It was a stupid junkie like you that shot me down, you punk bitch."

Which was just astounding logic.

First of all, this guy didn't even know Klaus. He was just assuming that he was a junkie because of how he looked. The fact that the assumption happened to be an accurate one didn't make it not stereotyping. And second, Klaus would never shoot anyone so clearly riddled with anger issues. He'd be followed by that ghost for the rest of his likely short life, and it just wasn't worth it. Not that he could blame whoever it was that had done it. If this guy was anything when he was alive like he was when he was dead, he'd be a bitch and a half to deal with.

"His logic is blowing my mind," Klaus whispered to Ben. Either he'd finally learned how to whisper quietly, or Frankie had just gotten used to Klaus talking nonsense under his breath, because he didn't bother glancing over that time.

"Hey, you wanna talk shit? At least have the balls to say it out loud, dickhead."

Rather than deign that with an answer, Klaus distracted himself with two questions. The first was whether or not this guy had to end every sentence his said with an insult or a swear word, as some sort of weird punctuation rule. The second was why in plume perfect hell so many ghosts kept trying to fight him lately. Jeez, what was this spirit world coming to?

Naturally, not responding only seemed to make the guy even more pissed. Not that anything Klaus could have answered with would have put him at ease. It was a catch forty two--no, that wasn't the phrase, was it? Anyway, there was no winning with this guy.

"Just leave me alone," Klaus said, burying his head in his hands. "Please."

He was met with the hyper intelligent response of the guy calling him a pussy, and making some inappropriate comment about Klaus's mother. Car crash girl asked Klaus whether he could find out if her boyfriend was taking anyone else to prom already. Pale woman broke down sobbing. Neck break guy spoke a lot of gibberish, and it really must have sucked to be a spirit that couldn't even talk.

Klaus made another futile attempt at covering his ears to drown them out, but it only made them more persistent. More loud. The dead were annoying like that. Selfish. They only cared about fixing their own lives, actively blind to the fact those lives were already over.

"Leave me alone," he repeated, somewhat pathetically. "I didn't do anything to you, leave me alone."

He jumped when there was a hand placed on his knee. Frankie was looking at him with concern, but when he spoke it was in a whisper. One that Klaus only heard with a lot of straining, because that stupid dead guy was still shouting in his ear. Frankie asked, as if the answer wasn't blatantly obvious, "Are you okay?"

With a whine Klaus said, "This asshole won't shut up."

"I'm the asshole? I'm not the one who goes around shooting innocent guys."

"Neither am I!"

"Klaus," Dr. Butler said, in a familiar bossy, disappointed-in-your-behavior kind of tone.

Crap. How loud had he said that? With some effort, he stilled his bouncing knee and turned away from the ghosts, back to the room full of strangers, who all seemed either shocked, amused, or some mixture of both. Well, he was glad some of them at least found his never ending torment entertaining. He scanned the room, trying to remember who the hell had been talking when he said something about an asshole who wouldn't shut up and said, "No! Nonono, I didn't--I didn't mean... _you_ asshole shut up. I meant...him asshole shut up."

Of course, when he pointed at that dickwad of a ghost, it looked to everyone else like he was either pointing at empty space, or that absolute stranger sitting opposite from Klaus, who actually hadn't spoken a word since introducing himself earlier. Either way, he was sure he looked completely bonkers.

Some girl sitting a few seats away laughed under her breath and said, "Fucking psycho."

The doctor gave her a look that told Klaus the two of them had already had a number of conversations about the way the girl spoke to other patients before already, and she opened her mouth to say something. Whatever it was, the group wouldn't get the pleasure of hearing it, because Klaus couldn't stop himself from pointing at her and saying, "I am  _not_ psycho. You're psycho."

"You're a little bit psycho," the car crash girl said with disinterest.

"Stay out of this, roadkill."

"This is going well," Ben remarked.

"Okay!" Dr. Butler said, clapping her hands together in a way that only served to remind Klaus of his growing headache. But the room, or at least its living occupants, quieted down and gave her their attention. Once she perceived it to be quiet she said, "Klaus, why don't you step outside for a couple of minutes. But come back when you think you can focus. And Riley? Tell Klaus you're sorry."

The girl murmured something under her breath that was probably an insincere apology, but it didn't matter, because Klaus wasn't listening in the slightest. He was too focused on getting up out of his chair and out of that room as fast as he could.

The bullet wound guy followed him out of the room along with neck break guy, but none of the others did. Probably because they just couldn't be bothered. But this shot guy, on the other hand. This guy was relentless, and apparently intent on calling Klaus every swear word he'd ever learned before he would even think about leaving Klaus alone. Fine. Whatever. At least he was out of that tiny, stupid room.

Once he was outside Klaus leaned back against the wall, sliding down to on the floor. Drumming his fingers over his lips and staring vacantly at the wall across from him while the ghosts screamed at him.

"Klaus, you're okay," Ben said. But the look of sympathy and vague worry in his tone told a different story. "Just focus on your breathing and you can go back in."

"Fuck that noise, I'm not going back."

The doctor had told him to come back in when he felt like he could focus, and if she knew his track record with focusing she might have known she was essentially giving him permission to blow off the whole session. And sitting in that cramped little circle listening to the living people complain about their problems on top of all the dead ones just wasn't his cup of tea.

He sat on the floor for a few minutes, tapping out a rhythm on the tile next to him. Then he got up and started down the hallway, in the first direction he happened to look.

Bullet Wound, apparently not bored of his tirade just yet, trailed after him saying, "Yeah. Run away from your problems like a damn coward. God, all you junkies are the same."

Ben asked, "Where are we going?"

"Hell, probably," Klaus said with a shrug.

"Took the words right out of my mouth," the ghost said.

Klaus continued doing his best to ignore him. His best wasn't very good, but it never had been.

He wandered aimlessly throughout the halls long enough to realize how very easy it must've been to get lost in the damn building, if it weren't for the fact that almost every door was labeled. All the hallways looked practically identical.

Eventually he came upon a door labeled with a name he didn't recognize, but what must have been an office, because beneath the name it was written 'psychiatrist.' The lights were off, which he thought was a pretty good indication that the room was empty. Klaus didn't bother wondering what the odds were that a psychiatrist actually kept their prescriptions in their office. He was just desperate enough not to think about it.

He tried the door handle. Of course it was locked, that office knew what floor it was on.

Klaus puffed out a sigh and straightened up, glancing around for something he might be able to pick the lock with. Ben gave him a familiar warning that he was going to get in trouble, and Klaus went ahead and ignored that, too.

The hallway being what it was, an empty ass hallway, there was absolutely nothing useful anywhere in sight. Klaus might have been less annoyed by that if he was in a better mood, but between not being high and the second ghost that had shown up to complain, he wasn't in a good mood and the new inconvenience just pissed him off. That was, until he remembered the couple of bobby pins stowed away in his pocket.

He was fairly sure that when Dear Old Dad had set aside the time to teach him how to pick a lock efficiently, this wasn't what he'd had in mind. What a damn shame.

The lock was a little harder to pick than it should have been, which probably had something to do with the fact that Klaus couldn't get his hands to stop shaking. Which was only weird because he wasn't even nervous about what he was doing. But pesky obstacles aside, he got the door opened pretty damn quick, if he did say so himself. Once it was done he quickly checked over both of his shoulders for any witnesses before ducking inside the office, not so much as bothering to shut the door behind him.

And boy, did it look like an office. Boring desk, boring bookshelf, boring chairs. He almost pitied the poor bastard that worked there.

"What are you looking for?" Ben asked, while Klaus rifled through drawers.

"A spare key if I can find it," Klaus said, closing one desk drawer and moving on to rifle through the paperwork left out on the desk. A key could be hiding somewhere under all that bureaucracy, right? Apparently not. But that was as far as his escape plan went.

"What d'ya know," Bullet Wound said. "A junkie and a thief. Shocker."

"And you wonder why you got shot."

"Prick."

Klaus didn't look up from the cabinet he'd moved on to rummage through, but he did take a second to flip the bird to Bullet Wound. Which was why he slammed the cabinet drawer shut and spun around when a girl's voice answered, "Well that's sort of rude."

The girl from Group who'd called him a psycho was standing there, leaning against the doorframe. She put her middle finger up back at him when he turned around, then stuffed her hands in her jean pockets and said, "You know they don't keep drugs in the offices, right, schizo?"

"Why does everyone automatically assume I'm on drugs?"

"Think about that question," Ben said.

The girl raised an eyebrow. "What, you're not?"

"Not at the moment," Klaus said. Then, as he turned to dig through the next drawer below, "That's kind of the problem."

"I'm sure that's not your only problem," she answered with a scoff, pushing herself off of the doorway and turning to walk away.

Klaus debated about stopping her. To ask if 'they don't keep drugs in the offices' implied that she knew where they  _did_ keep drugs. Or to ask why she'd bother to stop and tell him that. Instead he just resumed his search of that elusive spare keyring or maybe a building map, anything really that would help him get the hell out of dodge.

After going through practically the entire office with no results, he finally let Ben talk him into finding his way back to his room. He could regroup or whatever. Come up with a plan B.

It was when he stepped back out into the hallway to head back to his room that he remembered his previous observation of how easy it would be to get lost in these stupid blank hallways. While it might also have something to do with all the distractions and how preoccupied he'd been while he was wandering, Klaus realized he could not remember which way he'd come from when he found this stupid office. So he shrugged and started walking in the first direction he'd looked. It was working for him so far.

He'd just rounded the corner when he almost smacked into a short blonde.

"Klaus?" Miracle of miracles, he'd bumped into Dr. Butler. He really had to do something about his shitty luck. Maybe invest in a rabbits foot or something? No, that was gross. Poor rabbits. "What are you doing by the offices?"

"I was just wandering, got a little lost," Klaus said. It wasn't technically even a lie. "This place is like...corn."

"Excuse me?"

"It's a maize."

Dr. Butler gave him a look, like she wasn't quite sure whether to trust him or not. It didn't look like she ever fully reached her decision on that, though, before she cleared her throat and said, "While I've got you here, Klaus, we actually need to talk about something."

"Yeah, you got it. How about sandwich discourse: marshmallows, yay or nay?"

"No, I meant we need to talk about something specific," she said, shaking her head. But the face she pulled when he asked the question told him she was not, in fact, in favor of marshmallows on sandwiches. She went on before he could comment on that, saying, "At this facility, we expect certain behavior and integrity from out patients. You're going to be here for at least the next three weeks, and I need to know that you can follow those expectations."

Bullets laughed and said, "Bet they caught you, you fucking idiot."

"Shut your fat mouth," Klaus told him, which he thought was actually pretty generous, all things considered. The doctor frowned, and he hastily added, "Not you, doc."

Dr. Butler sighed and said, "That's one of the behaviors I'd like to talk about, actually. Now, I don't know if you need to be picking fights with these alleged spirits anyway, and maybe that's something you can delve into in your therapy session tomorrow--Yes, it's mandatory, don't interrupt me. But I can't have you speaking and behaving that way in front of the other patients. Especially not during Group."

Klaus huffed. "Sorry, did you say alleged spirits?"

"Well, it's hardly the stuff of science, now is it?" Great. Out of all the psychologists in the city, they had to stick him with the one that subscribed to the Hargreeves Hoax theory. "But Dr. Van Buren believed you, at any rate. That's not why you were committed, so it hardly matters."

"Oh yeah, sure. When I think about it that's what I think, too. It _hardly_ matters."

She narrowed her eyes at him, then seemed to decide not to comment. Instead she said, "The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is what happened after I gave you permission to step outside for a minute."

Ah, crap. Had they noticed the lockpicking after all? He hadn't actually taken anything, it wasn't like he could get in trouble for that, was it?

"I'm willing to let you step outside of meetings or activities if your so called...gift gets to be overwhelming. Especially as that might help with my first point about not lashing out in front of the other patients," she said, and her wording probably shouldn't have gotten on Klaus's nerves quite as much as it did. "But when I tell you to come back, you have to actually come back. If you pull that disappearing act again, I won't count the meeting for your requirement, and you'll have to attend another one."

"My so called gift," Klaus repeated with a wry laugh. God, but that was hilarious. "Who calls it that? If anything it's a curse."

"A curse? Interesting. Would you care to expand on that?"

"Raincheck."

She nodded and said, "I'll hold you to that. We're serving dinner in about five minutes, why don't I show you to the cafeteria?"

"Sorry doc, it's been a bit of a day. Think I'm just gonna go to bed."

The doctor just looked at him for a second, and if Klaus didn't know any better he might have believed he caught a hint of sympathy in her features. Good thing he did know better. But after giving it some thought, Dr. Butler said, "Alright. But just this once. We generally try to ensure a more routine schedule for eating and sleeping."

Of course they do.

Klaus gave a largely insincere thanks. She just nodded at him again, and then stepped past him to continue down the hallway to whatever office she'd been seeking when she found him, offering a passing (probably equally insincere) remark about sleeping well.

And Klaus actually did make his way back to his room, largely with the intent of going to bed. He had his doubts as to whether he'd be able to sleep 'well' exactly, but he was just exhausted enough to give it a try. He figured he could take advantage of having a mattress to sleep on for one night, tomorrow would work just as well for thinking up forms of escape.

There were, however, still a few inherent flaws with that plan of action, or inaction as the case may be.

First and foremost being that the room sucked. The sun had gone down, and whatever light it had previously offered had gone. The building next door must have closed, too, because no light came from their windows either. All he got from outside was a hazy glow from the streetlight below. Which was only a problem because entirely fucking sober, Klaus just couldn't fall asleep in the dark.

He tried trying to sleep with his ceiling light on, and instead just found himself laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Kept from sleep by his thoughts of how often he seemed to be stuck places against his will, not to mention the twelve year old kid sobbing in the corner.

* * *

Klaus didn't always ignore or pick fights with the ghosts. Sometimes he was willing to talk to them. And sometimes, if they were very polite, he was willing to help them.

Incidentally, the last time that Klaus had helped a ghost had been the first time he got in trouble with the law.

It had been four years ago. He was fifteen, and it was either at night or during one of his siblings individual training sessions, because he'd snuck out of the house with the utmost confidence that Dad wouldn't notice his absence. Found a nice pair of college students that were willing to go into the corner store for him and bring back some booze, because Klaus was honestly still too baby-faced to convincingly pass off a fake ID.

Surprisingly, it wasn't the drinking that got him in trouble.

Either Klaus needed to buy more liquor or the kid was the only ghost determined enough to break through the blissful haze that Klaus was slowly beginning to build up (probably some combination of the two), but it was the girl that did it.

She must've been eight years old, ten tops. Dark brown hair with bangs that reminded him just enough of Vanya that he didn't immediately shut her down the way he would have anyone else.

And well, Klaus might not have been drunk enough yet to keep her presence at bay. But he was just drunk enough that, when she told him about all of the things her step-dad had done to her (especially locking her in the trunk of the car, a punishment that hit perhaps and little too close to home) and how he'd wound up killing her when she cried a little too loud, he thought it was a perfectly good idea to hunt this guy down and thoroughly kick his ass. A better idea would have been to bring Diego along with him for back up, but like he said, he was just drunk enough that better ideas were already out the window.

So he'd done just that.

Or tried to, at least. But the step-dad had, naturally, called the cops when a fifteen year old stranger had shown up trying to pick a fight. So not only was Klaus too tipsy to even win the fight, but as a bonus for his good deed, he'd wound up getting arrested too.

He'd only sat in a jail cell for about four hours before he got bailed out. It was one of the only things Dad had done that he'd ever felt grateful for.

That was, until they'd left the police station and headed to the cemetery instead of the house.

Whether Klaus was being punished for sneaking out or the drinking or picking fights with ostensibly innocent strangers, he wasn't sure. It didn't seem to matter either way.

All that did matter was this: When Klaus didn't engage with the spirits that plagued him, when he ignored them or told them he couldn't help, all he got for it was trouble. And when he made an effort to help them out, give them whatever justice he could or show them whatever kindness he could, not only did he fail, but all he got for it was more trouble. So then what was the fucking point of him?

* * *

Klaus sat up in bed and scooted back so he was sitting with his back pressed against the wall there. He cleared his throat, but the kid just kept on sobbing. Probably didn't even hear him. He hesitated a second and then said, "Hey, kid."

The kid's crying didn't stop, not exactly. But he did quiet down a little, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his sweater and glancing across the room at Klaus expectantly.

Which was when Klaus realized he didn't know what he was supposed to say. 'Hey, it's okay.' No it wasn't, he was dead, there was a knife still sticking out of his gut. 'Hey, cry a little quieter, I'm trying to sleep.' He might've gone with that one if it wasn't a kid, actually. But right now it would not only not make the boy feel better, he'd probably cry even louder. If there was a suitable, appropriate way to comfort someone who had literally just lost everything, probably in a violent, traumatic way, Klaus still hadn't fount it.

After a moment's deliberating, Klaus finally just puffed out a defeated sigh and said, "Never mind."


	3. Hindsight's 20/20

Klaus wasn't exactly sure how long he got to sleep for, but when he woke up to that relentless knocking on his door, he was sure it wasn't enough.

"You alive in there, schizo?"

He didn't feel it, that was for damn sure. Klaus groaned, muffled by the fact that at some point last night he'd buried his face in the mattress underneath the pillows, in the vein hopes that would drown out the sounds. The pillows fell to the floor when he propped himself up on his elbows and answered, "Por qué?"

His door swung open a crack, and the girl from Group yesterday (Rosie??) poked her head in. She seemed even less interested in their conversation than Klaus, and that was really saying something. She threw a wad of clothes across the room at him, then cleared her throat and said, "Doc sent me. Breakfast's in fifteen."

Reluctantly, Klaus pushed himself up into a more upright position. He scrubbed a hand over his face, as if that would help wake him up in the slightest, and then looked down at the heap of clothes that had landed on his mattress. A white tank top and some black jeans. With some slight confusion, he glanced back up at her and said, "You brought me clothes?"

"One of the nurses mentioned you didn't bring anything with you so I thought..." she trailed off, shrugging her shoulders.

Klaus just mumbled, "Thanks."

"Whatever, don't make it weird. The jeans are technically women's but they should fit your chicken legs."

"You love my chicken legs."

"You made it weird."

She flipped him the bird, then ducked back out into the hallway.

Klaus looked out the window for a minute, vacantly watching the traffic go by on the street below before waking up enough to crawl out of bed and get dressed. He was glad they'd at least stuck him in a ward where they didn't make people where scrubs or those ridiculous hospital gowns. He actually did need a clean change of clothes pretty bad, too. A majority of his things were still in his wardrobe back at the house, and he hadn't been desperate enough to go back there just for a clean shirt.

"What band is that?" Ben asked after Klaus had changed, nodding at the logo on the front of the shirt.

Klaus frowned and glanced down at his chest. The font was just faded enough he couldn't read it. With a shrug, Klaus said, "Hell if I know."

"How'd you sleep?"

"By laying down and closing my eyes," Klaus answered. "Why, how do you do it?"

Ben rolled his eyes, but there was a tiny hint of a smile there. Klaus winked at him and started for the door. He jumped a little when he opened it, because that weird girl was still loitering in the hall outside his door when he thought she'd gone by now. She must have caught him jumping, too, because there was a glimmer of amusement on her face when she raised an eyebrow and said, "Who ya talking to in there?"

"Your mom."

"Mature," Ben said.

"Whatever. C'mon, I'm supposed to show you to breakfast," she said, pushing away from the wall she'd been leaning against the starting down the hallway. She didn't bother checking to make sure that he followed her but, considering Klaus had forgotten about food all of yesterday and most of the day before, he did follow.

But then, so did a tiny old Japanese man. Somehow, Klaus doubted he was looking for breakfast.

"They're pretty strict about the schedule here," Weird Girl told him while they walked, completely oblivious to the fact that she'd just walked right through the Japanese man. "Not too happy if you miss a meal. I only tell you this because look at you, if you miss a meal you might drop."

"Hey, why're you helping me?"

She shrugged. "Behavioral exercise."

They made it to the dining room, a big space that looked like what Klaus imagined school cafeterias would have looked like, if he'd ever gone to a school. Tables with benches instead of chairs, people lined up at one wall with trays to get whatever (probably crap) food was being served that morning. An immensely bored and potentially evil lunch lady serving said crap food. But there were a couple of orderlies scattered around the room, and a uniformed guard hovering by the doorway.

Klaus grabbed a tray and got in line right after Weird Girl, and while they passed through the line he did his very best to ignore the persistent crying of a man with a scalpel in his neck. He did wonder how well it boded for  _him_ that he was locked up in a hospital full of so many Caspers with hospital related deaths.

They made it through the line eventually, served something that looked like sausage but, like, depressed sausage. And some scrambled eggs.

Food having been acquired, Klaus ditched her in favor of sitting across from Frankie at an otherwise empty table. In lieu of an actual greeting, Klaus just told him, truthfully, "There's an old woman following me and every time I look at her she tells me my eyeliner makes me look crazy. I don't think she knows where she is."

"Have you tried wearing less eyeliner?" Ben asked with a puff of a laugh.

"This is  _yesterday's_ eyeliner. Well, yesterday's yesterday."

"Good morning to you, too, Klaus," Frankie said, looking up from his sad breakfast with the slightest hint of a smile on his face. Then, "Hey, I didn't see you at dinner last night."

"Awwwe, you were looking for me?" Klaus asked, resting his chin on one hand and wagging his eyebrows. It got a laugh out of the aforementioned old woman, at least. Klaus winked at her.

"What? No, I just..." Frankie petered off, reaching for the glass of water in front of him and shaking his head. Figuring that it was the protocol around there, Klaus pretended not to notice the scars on his wrist when the sleeve Frankie's flannel slid a few inches down his arm. They looked old anyway. After he set his glass back down Frankie said, "Was the old woman who you were talking to in Group?"

Klaus shook his head and said around a mouthful of eggs, "Nope, somebody else. I know we're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but guy was a major dick."

Frankie nodded, but gave him a weird look. Not quite judgmental, just a little bit uncertain, maybe confused. Given all of the judgmental Klaus already had to deal with on a day to day basis, he figured a bit uncertain was a pleasant step up.

There was a brief lull in their conversation then, while Frankie went back to eating and Klaus poked his food with a fork, a little unsure. He'd never seen sausage quite that color before, and frankly, he was hungry enough not to complain. Only the old woman told him not to eat it. She didn't offer any reasoning or anything, but still, it made him  question it.

He looked up at Frankie and said, "Not to pry, but how long have you been in here?"

"This time? Eight days," Frankie said with a small shrug. "Why do you ask?"

"Just wondering whether this breakfast is edible."

"You should survive."

"Well that's a bummer," Klaus said. He glanced back at the woman and told her, "He says it's fine."

She shook her head. "Pig. Not kosher."

She should've lead with that. Here he thought there was something wrong with it. Still, compared to other ghosts he'd been stuck talking to, she'd been so nice. He would hate to offend her. Maybe he could eat the eggs first, and she'd get bored and wander away, and then he could eat all the pork he wanted.

"Is this your first time in a place like this?" Frankie asked. Klaus gave a small shrug and nodded, and Frankie followed it with, "How old are you?"

"Nineteen."

For some reason, that answer made Frankie frown. Klaus was wondering whether to ask why or not when he shook his head and said, "You're barely old enough to be in the adult ward."

"I'm an adult."

"On paper," Ben said. Klaus threw a wadded up piece of napkin at him. Naturally, it went right through him, but Klaus thought it made the point.

"Well last year you'd've been in the youth ward. They used to cap it off at twenty."

"That how old you were?" Klaus wasn't sure why he asked. He figured he was just a little confused by Frankie's reaction to his age. Frankie couldn't have been that much older than him, yet he acted like Klaus was so young.

Nineteen felt kind of old to him, if Klaus was honest. What between the drugs and being around the people that habit required, the dangerous 'missions' Dad would send them on, the recent homelessness, and a lack of planning for any sort of future, Klaus hadn't really expected to even get that far. Not that he pictured any sort of death on his part. He just also didn't exactly picture a future.

Frankie nodded. "Yeah, but that was...god, that was four years ago."

"You've been here for four years?"

"No, I wasn't...I can't tell if you're joking or not. No, I was here for a little while, they discharged me, and now I'm back. Like I said, I've been here eight days."

Oh, right, he did just say that. Well that was a relief. Klaus had only been there one day and it was already awful, he couldn't imagine a whole four years of that. He'd probably just find a nice roof to throw himself off if he was there that long. And he'd probably be there longer if they heard him say that out loud...

Klaus waved a hand and said, "Yeah, I was totally joking."

Frankie rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to his food. Which was probably for the better because Weird Girl had mentioned they liked their schedules around here, and Klaus wasn't sure how much time they were given for breakfast.

It turned out they were given a pretty decent amount of time for breakfast. Most of the other patients left after getting their trays checked--Frankie explained they checked the plates after every meal because apparently undereating was a red flag to the doctors or something. He also told Klaus that sometimes the food was terrible, and gave him the secret to sneaking food out to throw away later so the doctors didn't notice. Frankie really was a wealth of knowledge.

Sometimes, a wealth of accidental knowledge. For example when he noticed someone standing by the door, and muttered, "I don't like that guy."

Klaus glanced a little less than discreetly over his shoulder to see who Frankie was talking about. Honestly, other than the fact that the guy was wearing a security uniform, Klaus couldn't figure out why. He was smiling at the nurse he was talking to, and sure he looked like he was rapidly approaching his forties, but he was a handsome devil. Klaus turned back to Frankie and raised an eyebrow, "What's not to like?"

"Oh," Frankie said, like he was surprised Klaus had heard him. Maybe he hadn't meant to say it out loud, Klaus did that all the time. He shook his head and said, "Nothing. It's...I don't know if I should tell you why, actually."

Was there a universe in which you could say that to someone and it wouldn't only make them  _more_ curious?

"What? I'm totally trustworthy."

Frankie actually chuckled. Asshole. Adorable asshole, but asshole nonetheless.

Ben rolled his eyes and answered, "You do remember the attempted theft from last night, right? I dunno if trustworthy is the word I'd use."

"Sure, but Frankie doesn't know about that," Klaus said, like it should be obvious. Because, duh. Before Ben could offer any sort of counterargument Klaus amended to Frankie, "I'm moderately trustworthy."

"I'm sure you are. But I don't want to be responsible for what you do with the information if I give it to you," he said, narrowing his eyes with a hint of uncertainty. Which sort of made it sound like he wasn't, in fact, sure that Klaus was, in fact, totally trustworthy. But Klaus couldn't even be offended, because it also made it sound like whatever this information was, it was going to be fun.

"Well, now I'm  _thoroughly_ intrigued," Klaus said, leaning forward, elbows on the table and a wolfish grin. "Now you have to tell me."

"You're not gonna let this go, are you?"

"Not a chance."

Frankie looked at Klaus for another second or so, almost like he was sizing him up. And it looked like the conclusion he'd come to was just to tell Klaus what it was. Only it seemed the rest of the staff there had taken up a second job, to ruin Klaus's day as many times as they could, because some guy in a white coat walked through the doors, and Frankie immediately shut up. No beans spilled.

To make matters worse, the guy looked around the room for a second, and made a b-line for their table when he spotted them. Once he was there he looked at Klaus and asked, in a tone that implied he already knew the answer, "Klaus Hargreeves?"

Klaus squinted at him. "Who's asking?"

"Uh, Tyler," he said, pointing at the ID badge that was pinned to the front pocket of his stupid coat. It had his picture on it and, sure enough, it read Tyler Vasquez. The badge said he was a doctor, but he definitely didn't have the demeanor of one. Not bossy or annoying enough, for one thing. "I'm Dr. Butler's intern. She told me to get you."

"Oh, so when you say intern," Klaus said, nodding. "You mean you're her P.A. Where are we going, P.A?"

"Therapy."

"Now I know who's asking: I'm actually not Klaus, you got the wrong guy," he said, with very minimal hope that it would actually work. Things so rarely worked when he wanted them to. He did his best to think up some realistic sounding alternate identity, and when he could think of none, he snapped at the scalpel ghost from before and asked in a whisper, "What's your name?"

The ghost said, "Phelony Jones."

It probably didn't help his case that, before turning back to Tyler, Klaus had to clap his hands over his mouth to stifle a laugh. He was still trying not to laugh when he announced, "I'm Phelony Jones. You guys committed a Phelony."

Phelony sighed and said, "Never heard that one before."

"You're not buying that, are you?" Klaus asked.

Well, at least Frankie laughed. He thought Tyler might have, too, but if he did he hid it behind a cough so it was hard to be sure. He shook his head and said, "C'mon, Mr. Jones. We're on a schedule."

Klaus exchanged a quick, if reluctant, goodbye with Frankie and then got up to follow Tyler out of the cafeteria.

The hallways were largely empty of any of the living hospital inhabitants, although they did pass a couple of nurses on the way. Tyler explained that a majority of the patients had something called 'quiet time' on their schedule after breakfast, and Klaus thought that might have something to do with why all of them were so damn loopy. What in the fuck was quiet time? That was mandatory? What were they supposed to do, meditate? Puzzles?

"Actually, studies have shown meditation to have a lot of benefits to a person's mental health," Tyler said, which wasn't one hundred percent an answer but whatever.

They arrived at the office quickly enough, and Klaus had to admit he was a little disappointed. Tyler seemed way more chill than Dr. Butler. Probably largely because he didn't introduce himself as 'doctor,' and also hadn't indicated that he followed the Hargreeves Hoax theory the whole time they were talking.

The office was somewhat small, although that was probably to be expected in a building that had to hold so many rooms in it. She had a desk hidden away in the far left corner, but most of the floorspace was taken up by a blue armchair and a matching couch. They faced each other with a short, glass-faced coffee table in between them, a fake plant in the middle and some boring looking educational magazines.

Ben went ahead and perched on the arm of the chair, eyeing the magazines with intrigue like the insufferable nerd that he was.

Klaus threw himself onto the couch with a sigh, inadvertently knocking one of the pillows onto the floor. Whatever, they were called throw pillows for a reason, right? He draped himself across the cushions and said, "You'd think punctuality would be more important to someone as stuck up as she is."

"Who, Dr. Butler?" Tyler said, frowning slightly. He shook his head. "Actually I'll be conducting your therapy session today."

"They don't even give me a real p-sychologist?" Klaus said, grinning and making an emphasizing  _pop_ sound on the 'p.'

Tyler didn't even bother telling him that the 'p' was meant to be silent. Probably, he had more important things to correct Klaus on. He said, "I am a real psychologist, as a matter of fact. But, if it makes you more comfortable, Dr. Butler did leave me some notes and your file for a bit of guidance."

"Ooh, I have a file?" Klaus asked, sitting up. "What's it say?"

"Medical history, stuff like that," Tyler said with a shrug. He walked across the room to the desk, which had some papers and a stack of folders littered across the surface. After a second of flipping through one of the files, he closed it and picked up a notepad and pen. Then he walked over to the armchair and sat down there. "Alright, so Dr. Butler mentioned that you talk to your brother, Ben, a lot."

"Ah, the calm eye of my shit storm. Great guy."

"Is he...here now?"

"Oh yea, he's right next to you," Klaus said, nodding towards where Ben was perched on the arm of the chair. When Tyler glanced over Ben offered him a polite smile, despite knowing he was invisibly to him. So Klaus added, "He says hi."

"Um. Hi?" Tyler said, obviously a little thrown off. But hey, Klaus was pretty sure a psychologist who didn't believe his patients ghosts were actually there wouldn't try to communicate with them. So Tyler was already better than Dr. Butler. He continued, "I'm not sure what the ghost rules are, but would it be possible for Ben to step out of the room? I want this to be an environment where feel comfortable speaking openly and confidentially."

Klaus chuckled at that. He wasn't sure if he was laughing because it was ridiculous to tiptoe around confidentiality with a dead person (Who would Ben tell? Another ghost? It was just funny) or if he was laughing because of Tyler's optimism. He really though Klaus was telling him anything important with or without Ben's presence?

Besides, even if he did get Ben to leave, he doubted he could do anything about the others. The girl in the corner with the rope burn on her neck, for example, had no reason to listen to him.

Still he stopped laughing when Ben gave him A Look. And he was about to object to said look when Ben got up and said, "I'll be back. At least give this a try. For me?"

"Seriously? This guy's a quack, sit back down. I'll just tell him you left."

"I heard that," Tyler said. "You didn't...you didn't even try to whisper."

"Crap."

"See you in a bit, Klaus."

Ben gave him a small wave before literally vanishing through the door. Klaus had always wondered if that tickled for spirits when they did that, or if they didn't feel it at all. He was sure he must've asked Ben already, but he couldn't remember what he'd said. Because that was his line of thought, he just asked Tyler, "D'you think it tickles when they walk through stuff?"

"They what...? Oh, ghosts. I don't know," Tyler said, shaking his head. "Before we get started, are there any specific goals you have here? Anything you think you'd like to take away from this experience?"

"If you're offering, this pillow here is insanely soft."

"I'm pretty sure you know that's not what I meant, but moving on. I guess if you don't have any specific goals, we'll start somewhere broader. Why don't you tell me about yourself? Give me a quick recap of the life of Klaus Hargreeves. We'll see where to go from there."

"Well, do you have some popcorn and a tissue box? Because it's a real tearjerker," Klaus said, earning a look that was one part amused but three parts skeptical. "Tough crowd. I'll start from the beginning. I was born at a young age..."

The 'life summary' that Klaus wound up giving him was, suffice to say, pretty fuzzy on quite a few details. A few meaning most. Most of the details. Actually, he really on gave Tyler stuff he could or would already know. Adopted by good old Reggie, part of some superhero bullshit for the better part of his childhood. Moved out. (He wasn't sure if he was technically moved out, as a matter of fact. He'd just left after that fight with Luther, gone out on a bender, and...not come back. Did that count?) Brought to the hospital. Committed in some shitty psych ward where the nurses weren't even hot. Stuck in therapy with a P.A. The end.

But Klaus made up for his severe lack of detail by consistently trailing off to either crack jokes or ask that girl in the corner to stop looking at him like that, thank you very much.

"Why don't you talk to me about your siblings?"

"Why not?" Klaus said, moving to prop his feet up on the coffee table. Tyler, who'd already straightened the magazines twice, glanced at Klaus's feet and his left eye twitched, but he didn't say anything. "Number One's tall, probably has something to do with that high horse of his. Quite a small head though...Two. Diego would be fun if he didn't have a stick up his ass. Number Three. Well, she wouldn't hide me when I bumped into her yesterday, so I won't be doing  _her_ any favors anytime soon."

Tyler raised an eyebrow, probably wondering whether to ask for the story on that one. Either he decided not to, or Klaus just didn't give him enough time to make up his mind.

Klaus went on, "Number Four, who's that? Oh, yeah! That's me! Most stylish. Obviously."

"Obviously," Tyler echoed.

"Hey! This shirt's not even mine, you can't judge it. But do you know who the band logo belongs to? I couldn't figure it out."

"Let's stay on topic, how 'bout?"

"Right, where was I?"

"Number Five."

He puffed out a sigh and said, "We don't talk about Five. Which brings us to Number Six. Dead! You kicked him out, you heartless bastard. And lastly but yes leastly, Number Seven. Hm, poor Vanya. You know, she never smiles."

Tyler just looked at him for a couple of seconds. It was a look he'd already gotten from Dr. Butler a couple of times. Analytical, like he was some specimen they were studying through a sheet of glass at the zoo, rather than some human person sitting in the room across from them. He didn't care for it. After a second Tyler said, "So your father never referred to you or any of your siblings by anything but your numbers?"

Folding his hands behind his head and leaning back, Klaus answered with a soft laugh, "He called me Saucy."

Which Tyler obviously didn't buy. He shook his head and said, monotone, "No. He didn't call you Saucy."

"No, that would've required a personality, huh?" Klaus answered. "He did call me 'disappointment' a lot...does that count as a nickname? Probably not."

And dammit, there was that look again. Klaus brought one hand back down so he could inspect his fingernails. Damn, his nail polish was already chipping on the pinky finger.

"It sounds like you have a complicated relationship with your family."

Was that a joke?

When Klaus didn't answer beyond a giggle, Tyler asked, "Were you close with your siblings?"

"We all lived on the same floor, if that's what you mean," Klaus said.

"Right. Can I ask why you don't talk about Five?"

"What's to talk about?"

They'd talked about him for awhile after he vanished. Debating about where he'd gone off to, whether he was coming back, gone on purpose or just lost, dead or alive. Of course anytime the conversation got brought up it turned to fighting, most conversations did with them. Eventually everyone had just stopped mentioning him, started pretending not to notice when Vanya left her snacks out, or the lights on. It wasn't like they decided they weren't allowed to talk about him, they'd just...stopped.

"What about Ben? Do you talk about him?"

"I talk to him. Keep up."

"Do you talk about what  _happened_ to him?"

"Yeah, sure," Klaus said, taking his feet off of the coffee table in favor of crossing one leg over the other. "It's a great ice breaker. Great story, real fun to tell at parties."

And Tyler must have said something else then, but whatever it was, Klaus wasn't listening. He was just a little bit distracted by the girl in the corner, who wasn't in the corner anymore, because she was walking over to sit on the couch next to Klaus. Still not talking, but her gaze was fixed on Tyler. Whatever, maybe she thought he was cute or something. She would get no points for taste, but she was the quietest god damn ghost Klaus had ever met, so he couldn't judge her too harshly.

He heard a snap and Tyler asked, "Klaus? You still with me?"

Klaus turned back to Tyler, squinting at him for a second, trying to see what it was about him that made the ghost girl think he was that cute. Maybe the sweater? He had his sleeves rolled up in a charming sort of geek way. Klaus said, "What're we talking about?"

Tyler said, matter of fact, "Your use of humor and deflection as a coping mechanism."

"And what, pray tell, am coping with?"

"Klaus, the way you tell it you've had spirits following you around your entire life. On top of that, an emotionally distant father--" Klaus snorted at that one. Emotional distance was the least of Dear Old Dad's problems. "--You've lost two of your brothers. And you also seem to have lost any remaining connection with your family. You're sleeping on a park bench. It's totally normal to have trouble coping."

Well absolutely nothing about his life had ever been anywhere near normal, so he wasn't sure that applied.

"I didn't  _lose_ Ben," Klaus said with a scoff. 

"So you insist you're just...Fine? With what happened?"

Jeez, of course he wasn't fine. What kind of an asshole did Tyler think he was? He thought maybe he should feel lucky, he was the only one that hadn't lost Ben. But when he thought about it, what he mostly felt was guilt. Not only did Ben not get to live his life, but he was stuck following Klaus around for an eternity, watching Klaus live a life he didn't even want. Klaus would probably trade places with him in a heartbeat, if it were an option.

Ben had been the best of them. It was probably the only thing that all of the siblings could agree on. (Well, that and Tiffany being a musical genius. Two, they could agree on two things.) Ben most definitely didn't deserve what happened to him.

Klaus shrugged and told Tyler, "Yeah. I've...what do people say? Processed it."

Tyler squinted at him for a second. Then he raised an eyebrow and asked, in what honestly felt kind of like a Dr. Butler impersonation, "Is that why your first overdose was just a month after Ben's death? Because you're fine with it?"

"Fuck. You," was the most eloquent response that Klaus could think of in the moment. He turned to look at the ghost girl sitting next to him on the couch, only to find she was already looking at him. Great, this better not be some sort of sympathetic spirit. If she asked  _him_ if  _he_ was okay, he would flip the coffee table right there. Nonetheless, he said, "Hey. What's your name?"

"Willa," she answered, almost a whisper.

"Willa," Klaus repeated with what he hoped was a friendly smile.

"What?" 

Klaus held his hand out towards Tyler, palm forward, ineffectively blocking him out. He said, "Butt out, P.A. I'm trying to have a conversation with Willa over here."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tyler shift uncomfortably in his chair. Huh, maybe he wasn't as chill about the whole Klaus talking to ghosts thing as he'd seemed earlier. "Alright, is there a way I can get you to focus?"

"Adderall," Klaus deadpanned, not so much as looking back at Tyler. Then, to Willa, "I hope you're not in this office all day. I've only been here, like, thirty minutes and this guy's already bored me half to death...Ah, shit, is that insensitive? I need a different phrase for being bored."

"You're fine," Willa said.

"Klaus, we're not done with your session yet."

"I beg to differ."

"Klaus."

Willa glanced back over at Tyler for a fraction of a second, something in her eyes that was kind of hard to read. When she turned back to Klaus she sighed softly and said, "I did hear you tell Ben you'd give him a chance."

Shaking his head, Klaus said, "I don't think those were my words. I think my words were, 'this guy's a fucking quack,' actually."

"Is she telling you to listen to me?"

And it wasn't Willa's urging that made Klaus turn back around then, but Tyler's voice. He didn't sound like he was using that as a win, the way the doctor that checked him had tried to use Ben's words against Klaus. He also didn't sound shocked, not exactly. Disbelieving, maybe? A little bit guilty, Klaus knew guilt well enough to recognize it by now.

He frowned, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "Wait, hang on. Do you...know her?"

"I just want you to consider the possibility, Klaus, that you haven't processed what happened as well as you'd like for me to believe," Tyler said. And now who was using deflection as a coping technique? "Or even as well as you'd like yourself to believe."

"You don't know me, asshole."

"No, but I'd like to."

"I bet you say that to all the psychos," he said. He turned to say something else to Willa, although he wasn't sure exactly what, but when he turned around she was already gone. Which was, honestly, another first. They so rarely left without either Klaus getting himself some form of intoxicated, or getting bored of screaming and crying at him forever.

Tyler glanced over to the empty spot next to Klaus on the couch for the briefest of seconds before looking back at Klaus and announcing, "That's all the time we have for today. I just want to go over some homework with you, and then you can go."

He was pretty sure it was at least twenty minutes early but hey, who was he to lead a gift horse to water? No, hold on. Well, something about horses.

"I'm not writing any papers."

"No, you're not," Tyler agreed with a small laugh that didn't seem one hundred percent genuine. "You're next session is next Thursday, so a whole week from now. Between now and then, I want you to have at least one genuine conversation with someone. Anyone. No jokes and no deflecting. Tell someone what you're feeling. It could be Ben, a nurse, another patient. Doesn't matter."

"How will you know I did it?"

"I'll just have to take your word for it."

"Score!"

"Listen, I know you didn't choose to come here," Tyler said after giving him a look. "But you're here. Try and make some good come of it, okay? Everyone in this building is rooting for you, okay? We want you to get better."

Tyler really should think about going into standup, what with crack up jokes like that. Klaus just nodded and asked, "That's it, right? Therapy over?"

"Yeah, therapy over."

* * *

Tyler watched his patient practically run for the door out of the office and couldn't even wonder if that meant he'd done something right or done something wrong.

He shook his head, getting up out of the armchair to go and put his notes on the desk for Dr. Butler. Maybe she wouldn't notice that he only had a little over half of a session's worth of notes. Maybe she would. But then, it wasn't like she wasn't aware Klaus would be uncooperative when it came to therapy. He was pretty sure her wording when she'd assigned him to the case had been, "You like a challenge, right?"

But he knocked the pencil holder over when he tossed the notepad down, making it tip and spilling one of the pens down onto the floor. He heard footsteps and stood back up, forgetting about the pen. "Willa?"

Nothing. Of course not, it had been footsteps in the hallway.

Sometimes he envied Dr. Butler. It must have been easier for her, to not believe those kids had superpowers. Klaus especially. The idea that the ghosts of the ones you'd failed, the ones you'd lost were just....walking around in the same places they used to, but you just couldn't see them. Couldn't hear or touch them. Yeah, not believing was probably simpler.

Shaking his head, Tyler picked the pen back up, put it away. There was a knock at the door.

"Yeah, come in. Hey, Frankie. How are you?"

* * *

Truth be told, Klaus had put all thought of Tyler and his homework out of his head the second he was out of that room. Not like old Reggie was there to threaten him when he slacked off about the things he was supposed to be doing. It took a little more effort to put Five and Ben out of his head, but pretty quickly he did that, too.

Some nurse stopped him in the hallway to ask whether he knew the days schedule or not.

Apparently other than mealtimes and the therapy shit, a lot of the activities were more optional. And here Klaus thought he had no control over his life whatsoever. Oh, wait.

"Some of the other patients are playing board games--"

"Oh, lucky bastards."

The nurse just kept on talking as if he hadn't interrupted her, only throwing him a dirty look, "Or you can go to the arts and crafts room, or head out to the yard. You're allowed one smoke break per day."

Well damn, she should have just led with that one.

Not that it made very much sense. They'd taken his Sharpie away when they admitted him because, why, again? But for sure, let the patients have a couple of cancer sticks each day (Ben's name for them, not his) because why not? Not that it was a gap in logic Klaus was about to point out or complain about. That thing about the horses again.

So he let the nice, bitter nurse show him out to the patients yard.

It was around back of the hospital, a portion of the area segmented off by some tall ass, barbed wire fence. Klaus figured he could still hop it, if he tossed something like a jacket over to buffer the barbs. There was also a gate set into the fence, but it had a lock on it, and he was sure lockpicking would take longer than scaling a fence. Then there was the security guards.

There were three people in the yard playing fucking frisbee, which Klaus only thought noticeable because until that moment he'd only ever seen people play frisbee in the sun. Right then, the sky was so overcast everything was drowned out and grey. Not frisbee weather, dummies. A few of the other patients were just sitting in the grass and talking which was, again, a sunny weather activity he was pretty sure. Not that these people got outside all that much, and beggars couldn't exactly be choosers.

It hadn't occurred to him until just then that he wasn't the only one feeling trapped in those clean white walls.

He spotted the smokers, loitering by the back wall of the fence. It was a small group, but they ranged from being around Klaus's age to mid twenties to one teeny tiny tattooed woman who looked to be approaching her fifties.

Before Klaus could so much as introduce himself, tiny woman offered him a cigarette from her pack.

"What'd they get you for?" she asked, as if this were jail.

He shrugged and said, "Mostly it's just that cops can't mind their own business."

"I hear that," one of the guys closer to Klaus's age said. He shook his head and added, kind of more to himself than them, "You almost walk into traffic one time..."

"Hey, I almost walked into traffic," Klaus said. The other guy held up a hand, and Klaus figured what the hell and high fived him with enthusiasm. The older woman just rolled her eyes at them.

They were, overall, a fairly welcoming group of people. They told him some of the places you could get away with smoking without getting caught, if you needed to and the daily smoking break was already over. And they didn't question him when he talked to Ben. Granted, they probably were rolling with the popular assumption lately, that Klaus was schizophrenic. But whether they believed that or not they didn't say anything, and they certainly didn't give him the judgmental looks he got from strangers on the street, or even some of the nurses he'd met so far.

His opinion of them might have been somewhat biased, though. They looked so good, compared to his other present company.

Willa hadn't come back from whatever ether she'd disappeared off into, but the 1940s girl from yesterday had made a reappearance, along with what seemed to be a pair of Siamese twins, and a guy with blood pooling out of his mouth.

"Klaus, isn't that your friend talking to the guard Frankie doesn't like?" Ben asked, gesturing somewhere over Klaus's shoulder.

He honestly didn't know what Ben was talking about. As of that moment, Frankie was the only friend Klaus would say he had in that place. But with half interest, he put his cigarette back between his lips and turned to see what Ben was talking about.

Sure enough, halfway across the yard was the guard from the cafeteria. He was talking to Weird Girl. Who, by the way, Klaus had never referred to as a friend. They were acquaintances at best. Besides, it looked like her and the guard were laughing about some joke between them, so Klaus doubted that she was in any trouble, even if Frankie didn't like the guy.

Klaus hummed skeptically. "Friend is a strong word."

"When I told you your drug dealers weren't your friends, you said they were because they helped you," Ben said, his tone making it clear he disagreed, even as he used the point to fuel his own argument. "So by your own flimsy definition, she is your friend."

"And by your own flimsy...Shut up."

Admittedly, that wasn't his sharpest comeback. But he liked 'shut up.' It was simple and direct. To the point.

"I dunno who you're talking to, hun," the tattooed woman said with a raspy laugh. "But you sure told them."

"Hey, what d'you know about that guy?" Klaus asked, slinging an arm around her shoulders and pointing across the yard at the guy in question.

She followed where he was pointing, squinting her eyes ever so slightly. And, since he hadn't actually given her any context, he figured it was a reasonable assumption to make, but she answered, "Ain't he a little old for you, sweetheart? You're not supposed to mingle with the staff anyway."

Rather than bother correcting her, Klaus just winked and said, "Age is but a letter."

"Number," she and Ben said in unison.

"That's what I said."

"You're a clever one, aren't you?" The ghost with the bloody mouth said. Or at least, that was what Klaus thought he said. But given the way his speech was kind of obstructed by all the blood he was gurgling, it sounded more like, "Yer ai cle'er one arnt you."

Sarcasm, Klaus decided, kind of lost its effect when it wasn't easy to understand.

* * *

Klaus hung out with the smokers for the better part of...what, twenty minutes? He wasn't keeping track of time, and it wasn't like he wore a watch. But the sun even came out for a whole minute before getting overlapped by those clouds again, and while Klaus was itching for something stronger than tobacco, he figured he should just appreciate getting to smoke at all.

And he was appreciating it. Or doing his best to, anyway.

Until he glanced out at the rest of the yard and realized he had an opening. That guard that Frankie didn't like was chatting up a nurse, the second one was reading a magazine, and a third one had walked out (probably to switch places with one of them) but he'd just been distracted by getting beaned in the nose by a stray frisbee. Which was a hilarious image, and if Klaus wasn't about to escape the place, he might've run over to thank the guy who'd done it.

But no sooner had the guard bent down to pick up the frisbee, than Klaus dropped his cigarette and bolted for the fence. The tank top was kind of thin for barbed wire cover, but he figured it would have to do and tore it off, tossing it up to the top of the fence to catch on the wire. Jumped up as high as he could and caught himself before gravity could fuck it up, wedging his toes in between the holes of the fence.

Ben, a little surprisingly, didn't even try to tell Klaus what a bad idea that was. He just stood there with his arms folded over his chest, shaking his head like a disapproving Mom.

Klaus was a good halfway up the fence before any of the staff even noticed him. Man, they were shit at their jobs.

Then, the second one of them noticed, all of them did. Because they had to open their fat mouths and yell at Klaus to get down, and then there was a whole chorus of voices yelling at him to get down. Although he thought through those shouts he heard one of the other patients, the one who'd high fived him before, encouraging him to climb faster.

"Hasta la vista, bitches!"

"This can only end well," Ben said, shaking his head when Klaus vaulted over the top of the fence.

And shit, the shirt wasn't quite the cover he'd expected it to be. He swore and then hit the ground a little harder than he'd predicted, stumbling but just catching himself before he could fall over. Under his breath he said, "God that hurt."

A little off balance, Klaus started towards the end of the alleyway, where he would complete his bold and daring escape. Except then he ran directly into the frisbee victim security guard, and both of them tumbled to the ground. They scrabbled on the ground for a minute, but Klaus got up first and started running again. That was, he would've started running again, if the guard hadn't yanked his ankle out from under him, and then he was face first on the ground again. The plan was going swell.

"I hate my life," Klaus groaned.

He turned his head to the side to see Weird Girl standing by the edge of the fence, looking down at him with one eyebrow raised. When she caught him looking back, she just said, "I'm not giving you any more shirts."

Then a pair of hands came up under his armpits to haul him back up to his feet. Klaus twisted around to see the magazine reader from earlier holding him, looking about as bored as he had while reading his magazine. Klaus tried to wriggle free, but it was less than successful. He got the impression that the skin around his ribs was less than happy with him. Fucking ouch.

That first guard was still on the ground when the one that Frankie didn't like stepped out in front of him, chuckling lightly as he stuck out a hand to help his coworker up. "Damn, Roger. You got taken out by this little twig?"

"Shut it, Mike," he answered, rolling his eyes but accepting the hand up all the same.

And he was definitely outnumbered now, that much was obvious. But Klaus was just stubborn enough to give it a few more attempts to jerk his arms free, to which the guard only tightened his grip and said, "You gave it your shot, kid. C'mon, do you want me to have to sedate you?"

"Actually, that sounds great. What d'ya got?"

The one Frankie didn't like, Mike, narrowed his eyes at him for a second. Not quite the same analysis as Tyler or Dr. Butler, but definitely sizing him up for something. The look was gone as quickly as it had come, though, and then Mike was gesturing for them to head back towards the gate in the fence. He said, "Come on, let's get you inside. Those cuts don't look fun."

What cuts? Klaus frowned and glanced down at himself and, sure enough, he'd gotten scratched up on his left side, and a little bit on his arms. Well, it wasn't as bad as it would've been if he hadn't used the shirt, he thought.

Grumbling some half-assed insults at the three guards, Klaus let them drag him back into the yard. Mike held the door open for them and once everyone had passed through, he turned and locked it behind him. Klaus wondered if it would be possible to get his hands on Mike's key later. If he snuck out while everyone was asleep, he could make it through that gate probably largely unnoticed...

Once they were back on the lawn, Ben said, "Tell me your plan next time, and I'll save you the trouble by telling you it won't work."

"Ye of little faith."

"What was that?" the one called Roger asked, but Klaus didn't bother answering.

They didn't let go of Klaus's arms, although their grips did loosen ever so slightly now that they were back on the hospital grounds. He hadn't really expected them to just immediately let go, though, so he didn't know why it unnerved him so much that they didn't.

They walked him all the way to the door back inside, and then Mike said, "I can take him from here, guys."

"You better," the other one said, rolling his eyes. "Because you were  _so_ much help catching him."

Mike gave his friend a light shove before taking Klaus from them, leading him inside and leaving the other two to keep watch over the yard. Things were a little quieter inside, the hallways were still empty. Well, 1940s girl followed him in, but otherwise they were still empty. And so far she hadn't given him that much shit, anyway.

They got a couple of steps down the hallway before Mike said, "I gotta say, that was a pretty impressive stunt you pulled back there. For a minute there, I actually thought you'd pull it off."

Klaus huffed. "Yeah, so did I."

"I am supposed to report that to your doc, though."

Ah, fuck. Dr. Butler. Klaus could already see how great their next conversation was going to be. He supposed he probably should've put some plan in place or at least done some thinking regarding what would happen if he'd failed his great escape. Hindsight's 20/20?

"You don't have to do that."

"Kind of do. Besides, someone's got to take a look at those cuts," Mike said with a small, warm laugh. Then he glanced momentarily over at Klaus, a glimpse of something unreadable in his expression. He asked, "Is it here, or there?"

Were other people doing the talking weird nonsense thing now? That was  _his_ thing. Klaus blinked and said, "What?"

"The reason you want to get out so badly," he clarified, gesturing back towards the door with the hand that wasn't holding Klaus's arm. Klaus looked back, despite knowing there was nothing to see but an empty hallway, some motivational posters, and a few more relentless corpses. "Is it that you think it's so bad in here, or so good out there?"

As a matter of fact, it was shit in there, but it was also shit out there. Klaus was fairly certain it was shit everywhere, and always would be until he could find a way to leave himself behind too.

"Don't psychoanalyze me, I've had enough of that today already, pal."

Less than deterred by Klaus's prickly response, Mike smiled at him and said, "I was just making conversation. I usually try to leave the psychoanalysis to the professionals."

"Yeah, well good. I'm a bit of a challenge anyway."

"I bet you are."

Mike walked Klaus out of the psych ward and to the elevator, then lead him to one of the Actual Doctor's offices. Left him alone in the room with this old man with no visible sign of how he'd died and a twenty-something with a big lead pipe sticking out of her stomach, until aforementioned Actual Doctor could show up to check out Klaus injuries.

The doctor was short and old, not at all like what Grey's Anatomy would make you expect. He was wiping a smudge off his glasses with his white coat when he walked in and said, "They tell me you hopped the barbed wire fence."

Klaus shrugged, and then regretted it. The less energy he had from trying to escape and running from security, the more he realized that shit actually hurt. He said, "Not the first one I've hopped. But lemme tell you, use a nice thick rug if you ever try it. Flimsy fucking tank top didn't do shit."

"Noted," the doctor said, putting on a pair of gloves as he walked over.

Klaus winced when the doctor applied some antiseptic to the cuts, and the lady with the pipe in her stomach said, "Please, you think that hurts? Look at what happened to me! There's a  _pipe_ in my  _stomach_. You don't even know what pain feels like!"

So Klaus flipped her the bird when the doctor wasn't looking.

In the end, he told Klaus that he was 'lucky' because he only needed two or three stitches. Klaus didn't feel lucky, he was still in the same damned hospital only now with the added bonus two or three stitches. He said as much to the doctor, and the doctor responded without so much as blinking, "Well maybe don't hop barbed wire fences next time, son."

So Klaus flipped him the bird when the doctor was looking.

A different guard walked him back to the psych ward. Back to Dr. Butler's stinky office, no less. And they didn't even give him any painkillers, which would've been the one good takeaway from the whole thing.

He'd barely even sat down when Dr. Butler was already saying, "Klaus, remember last night? That conversation we had about expected behaviors?"

"I might have a hazy recollection."

"Well, it shouldn't surprise you to hear that hopping fences and fighting the guards isn't one of those behaviors," she said. "What motivated you to do something so drastic?"

"I heard the ice cream truck coming up, and I just couldn't miss it."

"Klaus."

"Dr. Bueller."

Ben shook his head, momentarily glancing away from the bookshelf he'd been investigating to say, "I like Tyler better."

"Me too!" Klaus said, nodding. Then he waved a hand, as if waving the conversation away, and said, "But he made you leave, so what do you know?"

"If you could focus, please," Dr. Butler said, clearing her throat.

Klaus sighed, putting his feet up on the table in a way that he deliberately knocked one of the magazines off. She gave him a half-assed glare, but otherwise didn't bother commenting.

"Klaus, I know my decision to admit you wasn't one you necessarily agreed with--'

"You're telling me," Klaus interrupted with a bark of laughter. She was the second doctor today admitting to him that they knew he didn't want to be locked up in this place, and yet, here he still was. She didn't care what Klaus wanted, nobody ever had.

"But," Dr. Butler said, as if Klaus hadn't interrupted her at all. "This really is the best place for you to be right now. We can help you learn healthier ways of dealing with your feelings, with your trauma."

God, but these doctors were a riot.

"You can't help me," he told her. "No one can."

"Would you care to expand on that?"

"I cant try," Klaus said with a shrug. For a second, Dr. Butler looked somewhat hopeful. Poor dumb bitch, she actually thought he was ever going to tell her something she wanted him to tell her. Instead he just took a second to inhale as much air as he could hold, puffing his stomach out while he did.

It was entirely worth it to see that look on Butler's face drop. "Alright, not that kind of expansion, Klaus."

Klaus nodded at her, still holding onto all the air, and said, "Sure thing. But hey, does it look like I'm pregnant?"

Ben finally turned away from the bookshelf then to see just what shit Klaus was pulling, and when he did turn around he laughed so hard he snorted. Like any good sibling, Klaus just pointed at Ben and declared through his own laughter, "You snorted."

Dr. Butler cleared her throat.

"Look, doc," Klaus said. "I've already had my therapy today."

"Speaking of, how did that go? I noticed Tyler didn't leave me very many notes."

"Guess my sanity's not very noteworthy."

It took another couple of attempts, but eventually Dr. Butler seemed to decide she'd scolded Klaus for his dumb escape attempt pretty adequately. That, or she was just sick of his shit. Possible a mixture of both. Either way, eventually she gave him permission to just get the hell out of her office so she could have some quiet for five minutes--that part was conveyed more by expression than words--and Klaus couldn't get out of there fast enough. In the end, she did just tell him he wasn't allowed to go outside for the next week without a guard or a nurse going with him.

By then it was already lunchtime. And, although Klaus didn't really have much of an appetite at the moment, he found himself on his way back to the cafeteria, only stopping by his room to pick up his old shirt.

He must have beat Frankie through the line, because when he scanned the tables for somewhere to sit he didn't see him anywhere. Klaus shrugged and went to sit at the same table from the morning, just because it was empty and it was by a window.

When a tray was set down on the table across from him, he looked up from the conversation he'd been having with Ben expecting it to be Frankie. Instead it was Weird Girl. He honestly did try to remember her name, but he came up short and wound up greeting her, "Hey weirdo."

"What's up, schizo," she answered with a very faint smile. She picked up a couple of French fries off of her tray and said, "So your stunt in the yard earlier. Did you actually think that would work?"

"Almost did," Klaus pointed out. "Right, Ben?"

"No, it didn't."

"Who asked you?"

Weird Girl's gaze flickered over to the empty space where Ben was sitting next to Klaus on the bench, and she gave a small shake of her head before turning her eyes back to Klaus. She asked, "Did you get in trouble?"

"Well, I'm unfortunately still here," Klaus said, gesturing grandly to the room around them. "But otherwise, no, not really."

"Bummer."

Pretty quickly after that, Frankie showed up to save Klaus from having to think of something to talk about with Weird Girl. He set his tray down on the table and took the seat next to her, which was great because Klaus hated it when people took Ben's spot, even if they didn't know he was there. He said, "Hey Klaus. Hey Riley."

"Frankie," Weird Girl said, grinning at him. "Guess what schizo did today?"

"I don't think you should really be calling him that, Ri," Frankie said, in a little bit of a whisper. As if Klaus wouldn't hear him telling her that. He didn't wait for her to reply before turning to look at Klaus and asking, "Why? What did you do?"

"Really, I'd say it was more of a misunderstanding," Klaus said.

At the same time, Riley said, "He hopped the fence."

"You did what? Why?" Frankie's eyes widened, and he looked back and forth quickly between Riley and Klaus. Honestly, Klaus didn't know why he was so surprised. Nobody else had been. He said, "That's so dangerous, you could've broke your neck."

"If I should be so lucky."

"This might not be the best place to make that joke," Ben said with a small frown.

Klaus ignored him in favor of changing the subject. "So Frankie, what've you been up to then?"

Here he thought it had been a pretty skillful subject change. But even in a group this small, Frankie seemed a little uncomfortable having the attention centered on him. He did power through it enough, though, to tell them about his day thus far. He'd also been dragged to therapy it seemed, and he was stuck doing that when Klaus had hopped the fence.

"Hey, do you get Butler or Tyler?" Klaus asked, pointing at Frankie with a fry. So far he hadn't eaten a single one, but he liked using them to gesture.

"Uh I've talked to both of them. Why?"

"Cuz Butler is zero fun, and I was wondering if you'd figured out why."

"It's her job?"

They were talking about showing Klaus to the game room when they stepped out of the cafeteria after lunch, and Klaus was about to agree when he looked up and spotted Mike walking over to them.

"Hey, Klaus. Just the kid I was looking for," Mike said, smiling.

Frankie sounded a little more worried than was strictly necessary given the scenario, although Klaus was beginning to believe that was just his personality, when he leaned over and whispered, "Why is he looking for you?"

"Dunno," Klaus said, shrugging.

"There was something I wanted to talk you about, didn't get a chance earlier," Mike said. He seemed genuine enough, although Klaus couldn't guess what it was Mike had wanted to talk to him about. Fence hopping tips? "Walk with me?"

Klaus glanced over at Frankie, who gave a very slight shake of his head. Then he turned back to Mike and although he was curious he said, "You'll have to catch me later, I was about to beat these punks at Uno."

"It's cute you think you'll win," Riley said.

Mike only looked disappointed for about a second, and then he grinned and clapped Klaus on the shoulder, saying, "Sure thing. I'll catch you later."

The three of them watched him walk past them down the hallway, and after Klaus was sure he was out of earshot he poked Frankie's arm a couple of times and said, "Tell me why you don't like him, or I go catch up with him right now."

"He's just trouble, okay, Klaus?"

"Oh, let it go, Frankie," Riley said, nudging him with her elbow. "You make it sound like he killed someone. He's not that bad."

And she couldn't get Frankie to agree that he wasn't that bad, but she did somehow get him to stop disagreeing and as they walked the conversation easily changed to other things. Like the fact that, despite his earlier confidence, Klaus actually didn't know how to play Uno and did they absolutely have to play it sober?


End file.
